{"id":611617,"date":"2026-09-10T09:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T09:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/611617\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T09:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T09:24:16","slug":"is-your-step-count-too-low-try-walking-faster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/611617\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Your Step Count Too Low? Try Walking Faster"},"content":{"rendered":"

You don\u2019t need to take 10,000 steps<\/a> a day to improve your health. Studies have shown that much smaller step counts<\/a> can substantially reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease<\/a> and death. Now, researchers have found that the intensity of your walk matters just as much, and that walking quickly\u2014even for brief periods\u2014lowers a person\u2019s risk of death about as much as walking more slowly for a longer period of time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What’s the best step count and walking speed?<\/p>\n

In this study, the researchers drew on data from participants in the UK Biobank<\/a>, a long-term project that monitors the health of half a million people in the U.K. in hopes of uncovering the roots of disease. They aimed to fill a particular gap in the literature, says Borja del Poro Cruz, a professor at Universidad Europea de Madrid and an author of the study. \u201cThe vast majority of the body of evidence had looked at the volume of daily steps and health outcomes,\u201d he says. \u201cFew studies have isolated and looked at cadence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team looked at participants\u2019 step counts measured by wearable fitness trackers, how many steps they took per minute, and their likelihood of dying over the next few years. They uncovered a relationship: For people who walked fewer than 5,000 steps a day, keeping a quicker pace\u2014about 100 steps a minute\u2014meant a drop in their risk of death compared to people who walked the same number of steps more slowly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the same time, people who walked more slowly but for longer\u20145,000-7,500 steps a day\u2014saw a similar drop in their risk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This suggests that \u201csomeone who is below 5,000 steps per day, which is considered somewhat sedentary, might want to incorporate whatever they do in a more intense way,\u201d del Poro Cruz says. \u201cThey can then maximize the benefits of what they do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The results are not surprising, says Dr. Shaan Kurshid, a cardiac electrophysiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who was not involved in the study, but they clarify the relationship between steps and exercise intensity in a way that may be useful to physicians guiding people toward healthier habits. \u201cThe steps concept is important because it can resonate with people\u201d he says, \u201cand so I think that improving our understanding of that metric and how to best use it is important.\u201d<\/p>\n

How can you tell if you\u2019re walking fast enough?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not always obvious. \u201cIf you say you’re supposed to get 2.5 hours a week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity\u201d\u2014which is what U.S. federal guidelines recommend<\/a>\u2014\u201cpeople then will naturally ask, \u2018Well, what counts as moderate-to-vigorous activity?\u2019\u201d says Kurshid. It\u2019s an \u201cabstract concept.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s one way to estimate it:\u00a0 \u201cIf you go with someone and try to keep up a conversation, keeping up that conversation is not easy,\u201d says del Poro Cruz. \u201cOr, if you are by yourself and you are walking, if you try to sing a song, and you find that difficult, that means you are probably looking at 90-100 steps per minute, which is where we see the peak benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You don\u2019t need to take 10,000 steps a day to improve your health. Studies have shown that much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[43379,589,163,85,46],"class_list":["post-611617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-exercise-fitness","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}