Women with not-so-small calf muscles, rejoice. You may not be
able to fit into most of those fashionable, over-the-knee boots
everyone is wearing this winter, but your bigger calf muscles may
protect you from walking issues or even a stroke later on.
For women with peripheral artery disease (PAD), small, dainty calf
muscles are a major disadvantage.
Researchers at Northwestern Medicine point to the smaller calf
muscles of women as a gender difference that may cause women with
PAD to experience problems walking and climbing stairs sooner and
faster than men with the disease.
Peripheral artery disease affects eight million men and women in
the United States.
According to Mary McDermott, M.D., professor of medicine and of
preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine,
the disease causes blockages in leg arteries and patients with PAD
are at an increased risk of having a heart attack or stroke.
For their study, McDermott, a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and a team of researchers observed 380 men and women with PAD for four years, measuring their calf muscle characteristics and leg strength every year.
The researchers also tracked whether or not the patients could walk for six minutes without stopping and climb up and down a flight of stairs without assistance every year.
"After four years, women with PAD were more likely to become unable to walk for six minutes continuously and more likely to develop a mobility disability compared to men with the disease," said McDermott, lead author of the study.
"When we took into account that the women had less calf muscle than men at the beginning of the study, that seemed to explain at least some of the gender difference."
Interestingly, men in this study experienced a greater loss of calf muscle annually than the women, but the men also had more lower extremity muscle reserve than the women. This may have protected the men in the study against the more rapid functional decline women experienced.
For women with PAD, the key to preventing any decline in walking ability it to stay active. Specifically: walk.
"We know that supervised treadmill exercise can prevent decline, so it's especially important for women with PAD to get the diagnosis and engage in walking exercise to try and protect against decline," said McDermott.
The study was published in the February 2011 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
