Taking 10,000 steps a day is a habit that can reflect the degree of someone’s physical activity. It can mean someone has a more active, and natural, lifestyle compared to the sedentary lives that many people live today.
Walk More, Live Longer
Many studies support the fact that increasing both the time and speed of walking can reduce the risk of all causes of mortality and some diseases. However, most of these findings were analyzed based on people’s self-reported walking speed, which may not be accurate.The study, published in September, offers insights into how to maximize the benefits of walking and how to walk most efficiently when time is short.
Statistics show that as daily steps increase, all-cause mortality decreases. When daily steps reach approximately 10,000 steps, the decline in mortality is greatest, meaning that people who take 10,000 steps a day have the least chance of dying prematurely. Above 10,000 steps, the mortality-reducing effect of walking is no longer apparent.
Walking Faster Is Better Than Walking Longer
Walking faster may help you to achieve better results compared to walking longer.Walking speed constantly varies throughout the day. Researchers, therefore, counted each participant’s average steps per minute for the 30-highest minutes in a day. In the experiment, individuals with a peak 30-minute cadence of fewer than 52 steps were categorized as the slowest walkers; individuals with more than 96 steps were the fastest walkers.
How to Walk to Keep Dementia at Bay
Using the same set of data, the scientists then delved into the effects of walking on dementia.The risk of dementia lowered by 51 percent with maximal effect when an individual’s daily steps reached 9,800 steps. Greater or fewer steps resulted in much more limited benefits.
Most people may find it difficult to take 9,800 steps a day. However, the findings suggest that people who suffer from health conditions that prevent them from walking that much can at least strive for a basic target of 3,800 steps a day, which also provides a 25 percent lower risk of dementia.
Brisk Walking Reduces the Risk of Heart Failure, Stroke, Many Other Diseases
Overall, brisk walking is linked to a lower risk of all-cause mortality. There are many other studies that support this viewpoint.First, brisk walking also reduces the mortality rate caused by respiratory disease.
Some researchers divided walking speed into three categories: a slow pace of less than three miles per hour; an average pace of three to four mph; and a brisk pace of over four mph. They also had nearly 320,000 UK adults rate their speed and walking time themselves.
Interestingly, the study also finds that individuals who walk at a slow pace have higher morbidity and mortality from CVD and respiratory disease regardless of the length of time spent walking. In contrast, individuals who walk a moderate or low amount of time at a fast pace have lower morbidity and mortality from these diseases. Therefore, researchers recommend shorter brisk walks, which may fit into people’s busy schedules and still offer benefits for those who fall short of the recommended amount of activity.
Second, brisk walking also reduces the risk of CVD, including heart failure.
American scientists tracked more than 25,000 women, aged 50 to 79, for an average of 16.9 years and found that brisk walking can prevent heart failure.
On the other hand, if an individual walks less than an hour per week at a faster pace, the risk of heart failure is equivalent to that of casual walkers and average-pace walkers who walk more than two hours per week. This indicates the importance of walking pace.
Brisk walking also reduces the risk of stroke.
Compared to individuals in the slowest walking-pace category (with a median pace of one mph), individuals in the fastest walking-pace category (with a median speed of 3.5 mph) had a 44 percent lower risk of stroke.
How to Most Effectively Take 10,000 Steps
Adults and the elderly (over 65) are advised to engage in more than 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity and at least two days of muscle-strengthening activity per week. Walking at a speed of 2.5 to 4 mph is categorized as moderate-intensity activity.As mentioned earlier, the stepping cadence that has the optimal effect on reducing dementia incidence is 112 steps per minute or about three mph. Roughly speaking, walking about two steps per second is a relatively fast speed and cadence. With this cadence, walking for 30 minutes a day, five days a week, will meet the weekly recommendation of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise.
Furthermore, for people with limited time and physical strength, a daily 30-minute brisk walk can almost achieve the basic target of 3,800 steps per day proposed in the study, effectively decreasing dementia risk. The remaining steps can be taken at a slower pace to complete the 10,000-step walk.
Those who are physically unable to walk briskly for 30 minutes in the beginning can start with a shorter period of time, and gradually increase the brisk walking time by five minutes weekly to allow the body to adapt. It is also possible to combine brisk walking and slow walking, in which the accrued brisk walking time is 30 minutes.
Before starting brisk walking, a five-minute slow walk to warm up the ankles and knee joints is suggested. After the brisk walk, five to 10 minutes of physical relaxation can gradually slow down the heart rate and breathing.
