You don’t need to take 10,000 steps a day to improve your health. Studies have shown that much smaller step counts can substantially reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and death. Now, researchers have found that the intensity of your walk matters just as much, and that walking quickly—even for brief periods—lowers a person’s risk of death about as much as walking more slowly for a longer period of time.
Their results, published September 8 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, suggest that for people looking to improve their health without walking more, walking faster is a good option. In this study, the researchers drew on data from participants in the UK Biobank, a long-term project that monitors the health of half a million people in the U.K. in hopes of uncovering the roots of disease. They aimed to fill a particular gap in the literature, says Borja del Poro Cruz, a professor at Universidad Europea de Madrid and an author of the study.
They uncovered a relationship: For people who walked fewer than 5,000 steps a day, keeping a quicker pace—about 100 steps a minute—meant a drop in their risk of death compared to people who walked the same number of steps more slowly. At the same time, people who walked more slowly but for longer—5,000-7,500 steps a day—saw a similar drop in their risk. This suggests that “someone who is below 5,000 steps per day, which is considered somewhat sedentary, might want to incorporate whatever they do in a more intense way,” del Poro Cruz says.
The results are not surprising, says Dr. Shaan Kurshid, a cardiac electrophysiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who was not involved in the study, but they clarify the relationship between steps and exercise intensity in a way that may be useful to physicians guiding people toward healthier habits. It’s an “abstract concept.” Here’s one way to estimate it: “If you go with someone and try to keep up a conversation, keeping up that conversation is not easy,” says del Poro Cruz.
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