…a national pharmacy to determine which people — about 22% of men and 34% of women — filled prescriptions for antibiotics.
After factoring in things like age, body mass index, smoking, and alcohol use, study leaders discovered that individuals in the low physical-activity group (walking, bicycling, light gardening, for at least 4 hours a week) were 10% less likely to experience an infection than those in the sedentary group. In contrast, persons who were in the moderate-activity group had a 32 percent lower risk when compared to inactive volunteers.
Of course, women, whose risk of contracting at least one UTI is approximately 40% to 50% throughout their lifetime (because the urethra is shorter than in men), had the most success – indicating that all levels of exercise better prevented the uncomfortable infections when compared to sedentary behavior.
Considering UTIs account for as many as 8.1 million visits to health care providers each year, the findings could prove to be very helpful. “These results indicate that practitioners should be aware of physical activity as a potential preventive factor for bacterial infections in the work of disease prevention and health promotion,” the authors wrote.