More and more research is showing that you don’t need to take 10,000 steps a day to boost your health, and the largest study of its type now supports the notion that taking shorter walks may be important for extending your life.
According to research released on August 8 in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, merely 4,000 steps throughout the day, or 30 to 45 minutes overall, is sufficient to lower your chance of dying young. The number one cause of mortality in the US, cardiovascular disease, has been related to a decreased risk of death even at 2,300 total steps per day (or around 15 to 20 minutes of walking).
The study’s authors, scientists from more than a dozen international organizations, including the Medical University of Lodz in Poland and Johns Hopkins University, claim that this is substantially less than was previously believed.
This was the largest investigation of its sort, examining data from more than 200,000 individuals during an average follow-up of seven years from 17 separate studies from across the world.
They discovered a considerable correlation between daily walking and a higher likelihood of living a longer, healthier life. No matter your age, gender, or where you reside in the globe, Maciej Banach, the study’s primary author and a professor at the Medical University of Lodz and Johns Hopkins University, claims that walking more leads to even more health advantages.
“Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better,” Banach said in a news statement.
The researchers found that increasing the daily step count by 1,000 steps was associated with a 15% reduced risk of premature death from any cause and that increasing the daily step count by 500 steps was associated with a 7% lower risk of fatal heart disease.
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The researchers observed that the health advantages increased up to 20,000 steps per day (the maximum amount included in the study), and they speculated that they may even continue to climb over that point because they haven’t yet discovered an upper limit.
The caveat is that the connection between walking and health advantages is only observational, necessitating further study to establish that walking lowers the risk of illness and early mortality.
Since nutrition and exercise may be equally good in extending our lives as some medications, Banach stated in the news release, it is worthwhile to include walking as part of a healthy lifestyle to prevent significant health conditions like heart disease.
