Touted to be one of the safest and easiest ways to improve fitness and health, walking every day may also help you live longer, reveal findings of a new Women’s Health study.
To understand which steps are better, scientists compared the effects of uninterrupted walking sessions of 10 minutes or longer to occasional short spurts, such as climbing the stairs and general daily activities.
It was discovered that participants who took more steps in short spurts lived longer, regardless of how many steps they had in longer, uninterrupted bouts.
In order to attain significant mortality-delaying benefits of a daily walk, the magic number was found to be 4,500 steps a day. In fact, the benefits levelled off at about 7,500 steps per day.
Interestingly, compared to number of daily steps, each initial increase of 1,000 steps per day was linked to a 28 per cent decrease in death during the follow-up period.
For people who walked at least 2,000 steps per day, a 32 per cent decrease in death risk was noted.
Publishing in the journal, JAMA Internal Medicine, the team warned that since the study participants were mostly older women with an average age of 72, more research needs to be conducted to see whether the same applies to a more diverse group.