Gaby
For years, walking at least 10,000 steps a day has been considered the gold standard for physical activity. Regular walking helps maintain fitness and slows the development of diseases.
However, a new study has shown that you don’t necessarily need to clock a significant number of steps to achieve the desired health benefits. Not everyone has the time for long strolls, so what can replace lengthy walks?
What Researchers Discovered
A team from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, USA, studied data from 14,399 women aged 62 and older (the average age of participants was 72). Each woman wore a fitness tracker to measure her activity level and completed an annual survey about her health and habits, which included questions about weight fluctuations, smoking, alcohol consumption, menopause, and personal and family medical history.
The team found that those women who took 8,000 to 8,500 steps a day reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 40 percent compared to those who only walked about 3,000 steps daily.
Moreover, the researchers discovered that the same reduction in risk was observed in participants who engaged in physical activity for 75 minutes a day. The researchers concluded that there’s no need to fixate on hitting a specific step count, as reported by the Daily Mail. There are plenty of other ways to enhance health and lose weight that can be done regularly within a set timeframe.
Dr. Rikuta Hamaya, the lead author of the study, noted, “Everyone chooses their own form of movement, and nearly all forms of movement are beneficial for our health.”
So, you can opt for exercises that focus on time or those that concentrate on step counts. All of them are effective.
The results of the study were published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
