How much do you need to walk every day to stay at your best and promote good heart health? The long-standing advice has been 10,000 steps a day, but how many people can actually achieve that goal and is it really the magic number you should reach for?
You’ll be glad to know that the idea of walking 10,000 steps a day started as simply a marketing campaign for a pedometer called Manpo-kei (10,000-step meter) in Japan in the 1960s. The pedometer was invented by a Japanese professor of health science who believed walking 10,000 steps daily would help the Japanese people avoid obesity. The ads for the device said, “Let’s walk 10,000 steps a day!”. The number 10,000 seems to have stuck and is now a popular daily step target even though its origin has been completely forgotten.
A scientific statement published in the May issue of the AHA journal Circulation highlights that many people are not able to meet the recommended guidelines, and that many communities may not even be aware that a bit of daily walking can improve their health. The authors hope their findings will provide an opportunity to focus community efforts on physical activity programs in places where people need them the most, and nowadays that seems to be just about everywhere.
The authors wrote that even though bringing awareness to the lower levels of physical activities in certain groups “will not address the underlying structural inequities that deserve attention,” it’s still important to promote physical activity—especially in adults with “both low physical activity levels and poor cardiovascular health.”
Forget the 10,000 steps goal, that equals about 5 miles a day and for most people that is just a no-starter.
Experts recommend a daily 20-minute exercise goal—and the good part is that it can be cumulative: walking throughout the day adds up.
“Going for a brisk walk gets you moving toward that goal,” Gerald Jerome, PhD, FAHA, volunteer chair of the writing committee for the scientific statement and a behavioral exercise scientist and professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Towson University, told Verywell. “Taking the stairs or parking a little farther away from a store entrance also helps you move toward your goal.”
And it’s not just your heart that will benefit from such a practice. According to a study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, walking even just around 4,000 steps a day may reduce the risk of dementia by 25%. Upping the daily step count to just under 10,000 could cut to half a person’s risk of developing dementia. People who walked with “purpose” – at a pace over 40 steps a minute – were able to cut their risk of dementia by 57% with just 6,315 steps a day.
Smadar Kort, MD, a cardiologist and Director of the Echocardiography and Structural Heart Imaging Program at Stony Brook Heart Institute, told Verywell that going for a walk increases your heart rate so it can pump more oxygen and nutrients to your muscles. It also improves blood flow in your body, can lower blood pressure, and can make your heart stronger over time.
“Walking can help a person maintain a healthy weight or lose weight if he or she is overweight, and it can lower blood pressure,” Kort added.
Experts urge that it’s never too late to start getting active. Even people who never engaged in physical activity can start.
According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, regular activity such as walking can help lower LDL or “bad” cholesterol and increase HDL or “good” cholesterol levels. That can be another step in the right direction for heart health because high levels of “bad” cholesterol can clog your arteries and increase your risk of heart disease, stroke, and probably, dementia.
Regular physical activity can also reduce inflammation throughout your body and lower your risk of chronic diseases like diabetes, cancer, and coronary heart disease. Additionally, it’s good for your mental health.
“Walking, especially in nature, can help reduce stress,” said Kort. “We know that stress has a negative effect on our health—including cardiovascular health.”
So get out there and start with just a few steps, then make it your goal to increase them each day.
