Researchers have found that one long walk a day is better for your heart health than many short walks.
Walking for at least 15 minutes—or about 1,500 steps—at a stretch is enough to give your heart a workout. It also reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease by two-thirds – compared to people who walk for no more than five minutes at a time.
“For the most inactive people, switching from short walks here and there to longer sustained walks may have health benefits,” said co-author Dr Matthew Ahmadi of the University of Sydney.
There is a perception that health professionals recommend walking 10,000 steps a day, but this is not necessary.
Adding one or two longer walks a day, each lasting at least 10 to 15 minutes at a comfortable but steady pace, may have significant benefits—especially for people who don’t walk much.
The study, published in the Annals of International Medicine, looked at 33,560 adults aged 40 to 79 in the UK who walked fewer than 8,000 steps a day.
Participants were given a wristband for a week that measured their steps and also measured the length of each walk.
Over eight years, researchers from the University of Sydney and the European University in Spain tracked the participants’ health.
The results showed that among people who took fewer than 8,000 steps per day, those who walked for at least 10 to 15 minutes or more had a 4 percent increased risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attack or stroke.
In comparison, participants who took their steps for very short periods of less than five minutes had a 13 percent lower risk of having a cardiovascular event.
But people who were the least active and walked 5,000 steps a day or less benefited the most from consistent walking.
Researchers found that people in this group can reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases from 15% to 7% by walking for 15 minutes a day instead of 5 minutes.
The risk of death was also reduced in this group from 5% for those who walked five minutes a day to less than 1% for those who walked 15 minutes a day.
“We tend to put all the emphasis on the number of steps or the total amount of walking, but we ignore the vital role of patterns, for example the ‘how’ of walking,” said Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis, lead author of the paper.
This study shows that even people who are very physically inactive can maximize their heart health benefits by changing their walking patterns to walk longer at a time.
