On average, Americans take just under 5,000 steps per day. This is an alarming figure considering that public health researchers estimate that the daily number of steps is less than 5,000 people lead a sedentary lifestyleand a sedentary lifestyle undermines health, leading to earlier death.
So researchers are interested in figuring out the best way to get people moving. Do all steps count? Should they be fast paced or is slow walking normal? Does it matter how many days a week you go for long walks? They turned to huge databases to link people's health with details of their activities. IN study published on October 28 in the magazine Annals of Internal MedicineScientists found that among more than 30,000 people in the UK who took fewer than 8,000 steps a day, gaining steps through longer walks, rather than gradually increasing them, was associated with a lower risk of death and heart disease.
For many people, daily steps are broken up into many tiny walks to the kitchen or forays into the garage. And these short bursts of activity are certainly beneficial to some extent, says Borja del Poro Cruz, a professor at the Universidad Europa Madrid and author of the study. “Essentially, we found that any number of steps was associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality,” he says.
But when people walked for a little longer—10 or 15 minutes at a time—the researchers saw a greater reduction in risk scores than for people whose short bouts of movement added up to the same number of steps.
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Previous studies on this topic have mostly relied on either self-administered questionnaires or device-measured step counts. “This study takes into account more extensive data: walk length and number of steps,” Dr. Carl Lavie, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the Ochsner Clinical School of Louisiana, wrote in an email to TIME. Research like this helps prove that adjusting the way you train (without having to increase the amount of training) can be beneficial. The more the merrier, but every little helps.
If taking even a small number of steps is associated with improved health, why do people have such a hard time getting up and moving around? In some parts of the world, including much of the United States, the deck is unwalkable, del Poro Cruz says. He lives in a historic city in Spain where cars are impractical, and so he walks everywhere—to his children's school, to get groceries, to work—taking 15,000 steps a day without even trying. It's not easy to incorporate movement into everyday life when walking to the grocery store means a five-mile walk along the side of the highway.
But some people find a way out. Public Policy Researcher Chris Vilga, Substack Contributor How to walk around America There are a few rules for beginners, including this: start where you are. You don't have to go somewhere to go for a walk; which divides the world into places to walk and places that are not meant to be walked. In fact, the world is always here, right outside the car window. You may be surprised by what you discover on your path to better health.
