Walking briskly can increase the heart rate, improve circulation, lower blood pressure, and help people lose weight.
Older adults don’t have to hit a high daily step count to reap serious benefits for their heart health, according to a new analysis.
Older women who walked at least 4,000 steps one to two days per week saw a 26 per cent lower risk of death compared with women who never hit this step count, according to the study. They also had a 27 per cent lower risk of heart disease.
The benefits were even greater among women who hit that threshold at least three days per week: a 40 per cent lower mortality risk overall and a 27 per cent lower heart disease risk.
Walking briskly can increase the heart rate, improve circulation, lower blood pressure, and help people lose weight.
The study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, included more than 13,500 older women with a median age of about 71 in the United States. Researchers gave them step count trackers and then tracked their health outcomes for the next 10 years.
Notably, women’s total step counts over the week seemed to be more important for their heart health than the number of days they got moving, the study found.
That suggests that people can benefit whether they take long walks once or twice per week, or walk only a little bit every day.
I-Min Lee, one of the study’s authors and an epidemiologist at Harvard University, said the findings are important because older adults are often less physically active.
“Because of today’s low step counts, it’s increasingly important to determine the minimum amount of physical activity required to improve health outcomes, so that we can offer realistic and feasible goals for the public,” Lee said in a statement.
The findings are the latest to debunk the oft-cited target of 10,000 steps per day for optimal health. A study published in August, for example, found that people start seeing the benefits around 7,000 daily steps.
At that level, women in the latest study began seeing diminishing returns when it came to their heart health. The risk of disease was 16 per cent lower than in women who never reached 7,000 steps.
Dr Rikuta Hamaya, a medicine instructor at the US-based Mass General Brigham and one of the study’s authors, said older women should be advised to walk at least 4,000 steps one to two days per week in order to boost their heart health.
“If we can promote taking at least 4,000 steps once per week in older women, we could reduce mortality and cardiovascular disease risk across the country,” Hamaya said.
