London, Apr 8 (IANS): A new study has revealed that women who take brisk walks are likely to have reduced chances of suffering from a stroke.

Harvard researchers have found that walking for two or more hours a week were also 30 percent less likely to suffer a stroke than those who said they rarely walked very far.

A casual walking pace is normally around two miles an hour they said and more than four miles and hour is very brisk.

"For a brisk pace, you should be able to talk but not able to sing. If you cannot talk, slow down a bit. If you can sing, walk a bit faster," telegraph.co.uk quoted Lead author Jacob Sattelmair, doctoral candidate in epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, America, as saying.

"Physical activity, including regular walking, is an important modifiable behavior for stroke prevention.

"Physical activity is essential to promoting cardiovascular health and reducing risk of cardiovascular disease, and walking is one way of achieving physical activity."

"Though the exact relationship among different types of physical activity and different stroke subtypes remains unclear, the results of this specific study indicate that walking, in particular, is associated with lower risk of stroke," Sattelmair added.

The results are published in the journal Stroke.