The pace at which you walk may be more important than the total number of steps when it comes to preventing disease, research suggests.
For years, studies have shown that 10,000 steps a day is the sweet spot for reducing your risk of premature death, no matter how fast you take them.
But experts in Denmark and Australia have found that picking up the pace could lower your risk even more, even if you take fewer steps.
In the largest investigation of its kind, researchers monitored 78,500 Britons over the age of 40 between 2013 and 2015 using wearable fitness trackers.
One study found that 9,800 daily steps at a casual pace were optimal for reducing dementia risk, cutting it in half.
But doing just 6,300 at high speed made people 57 percent less likely to develop the condition. For electric walkers, the risk was up to 62 percent lower.
In a second study, researchers found that every 2,000 steps taken per day reduced the risk of premature death by about a tenth.
But walking at a faster pace was associated with an even greater protective effect.
The pace at which you walk may be more important than the total number of steps when it comes to preventing disease, research suggests (file image)
Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis, lead author of the study and a public health expert at the University of Sydney, said: “Step counting is easy to understand and widely used by the public to track activity levels thanks to the growing popularity of step counting. fitness trackers and apps, but they rarely do.” people think about the rhythm of their steps.’
Dr Matthew Ahmadi, co-author and researcher at the university, added: “The take-home message here is that for protective health benefits, people might not only ideally aim to take 10,000 steps a day, but also walk faster.
He added: “The size and scope of these studies using wrist-based trackers make them the strongest evidence to date suggesting that 10,000 steps a day is the sweet spot for health benefits and faster walking is associated. with additional benefits.
Participants in the studies, who had an average age of 61, wore a wrist accelerometer to measure physical activity over a seven-day period.
Their step counts were compared to medical records and death certificates seven years later.
Only those who did not have heart disease, cancer or dementia in the first two years of the study were included in the final analysis.
The researchers found that people who walked approximately 3,800 steps a day at any speed reduced their chances of dementia by 25 percent.
The researchers said this highlighted how even a little bit can go a long way when it comes to exercise.
But the optimal number of steps per day, regardless of speed, was found to be 9,826, reducing risk by 51 percent.
People who walked with a “purpose,” at a rate of more than 40 steps per minute, had a 57 percent protective effect with just 6,315 steps per day.
The greatest reduction in dementia risk (62 percent) was achieved by people who walked at a very fast pace of 112 steps per minute for at least 30 minutes a day.
In the second study with the same participants, the researchers found that every 2,000 daily steps reduced the risk of premature death by 8 to 11 percent, up to 10,000 steps.
A similar association was seen for cardiovascular disease and cancer diagnoses.
But a faster pace was “consistently associated with lower risks for all outcomes, beyond the benefit of total daily steps,” the researchers said.
The magic goal of 10,000 steps per day is believed to have been invented by a 1954 Japanese marketing campaign to sell pedometers.
But over the decades, research has tipped in favor of that goal, finding that 7,000 to 10,000 a day is optimal.
Walking keeps people at a healthy weight and gets blood circulating through the arteries, triggering self-renewing processes that keep them plaque-free.
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