Women free of money stress, sleep issues, arthritis have better physical health in midlife

Key takeaways :

• About 15% of midlife women improved their physical health over 11 years.
• More physical activity, lower BMI and less medication use were associated with better physical health.

Factors linked to clinically important physical health and function improvements for women during midlife include baseline health, lack of stressors, more physical activity, lower BMI and less medication use, researchers reported.

“Midlife is a period of important changes in health and function. Several studies have found that physical health and functional limitations commence during midlife for women and that these limitations persist throughout midlife and into late adulthood,” Leah M. Santacroce, MS, programmer analyst in the division of rheumatology, inflammation and immunity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, and colleagues wrote. “Good or improving physical health and functioning is an important goal and a main component

of successful aging. Although successful aging is commonly studied in populations of older

adults, differences in physical health and function trajectories are evident as early as midlife.”

To identify contributors to improvements in physical health among midlife women, Santacroce and colleagues analyzed physical component scores from the 36-item Short-Form Health Survey for 1,807 participants (mean age, 54.5 years) in the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation cohort. All women were followed up annually for up to 21 years between 1996 and 2017. At enrollment, all women were aged 42 to 52 years, premenopausal and not taking hormones and self-identified as Black, Chinese, Hispanic, Japanese or white. Researchers compared sociodemographic indicators, health status measures and comorbidities at visits 8 and 15.

Overall, 15% of women included in the study experienced a clinically important improvement in their physical component scores by five or more points during a median of 11.1 years. At the eighth visit, researchers observed no financial strain (OR = 1.73; 95% CI, 1.18-2.52), no sleep disturbances (OR = 1.43; 95% CI, 1.05-1.96), no osteoarthritis (OR = 1.42; 95% CI, 1.01-1.99) and having a higher physical activity score (OR = 1.17; 95% CI, 1-1.37) as factors associated with improved physical component scores.

Women with higher physical component scores (OR = 0.84; 95% CI, 0.83-0.86), higher BMI (OR = 0.95; 95% CI, 0.93-0.97) or who were taking more medications (OR = 0.93; 95% CI, 0.88-0.98) at the eighth visit experienced lower odds of improved physical component scores.

“The results of this study are likely to help us develop strategies for interventions to support physical health improvements in midlife,” the researchers wrote.