A new study has concluded that there is a strong association between better health indicators and longer walks.
When it comes to walking for health, new research in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggests that the duration of continuous walking may be as important as the total number of steps.
The study indicates that longer, uninterrupted walks are associated with lower risks of heart disease and death, compared to the same number of steps divided into short periods.
The findings are based on an analysis of data from the UK Biobank, a long-term health study tracking hundreds of thousands of people. The researchers focused on a subgroup of 33,560 adults with an average age of 62 who were considered “suboptimally active,” meaning they took less than 8000 steps per dayon average. Participants with pre-existing cardiovascular disease or cancer were excluded from the start.
Although daily step counts are increasingly used in public health recommendations, researchers wanted to understand whether the gait pattern — short activity or continuous activity — influenced health outcomes. Participants were categorized by the typical length of their walks, ranging from less than five minutes to more than 15 minutes. Participants were also divided into two groups based on general physical activity: less than 5000 steps per day and between 5000 and 7999 steps.
Over almost a decade of follow-up, the study recorded 735 deaths from all causes and 3,119 cardiovascular events. The results showed a clear pattern: people who tended to walking for very short periods presented the greatest risks. Those whose periods of activity lasted, on average, less than five minutes had a 4.36% risk of death and a 13.03% risk of a cardiovascular event during the study period.
In contrast, participants who typically walked in continuous periods of 15 minutes or more had the lowest risks, with a 0.8% chance of death and a 4.39% chance of suffering a cardiovascular event. Periods of average duration fell between these extremes. For example, walks of five to ten minutes were associated with a mortality risk of 1.83%, while walks of ten to fifteen minutes were associated with a risk of 0.84%, says .
The association was particularly strong among the most sedentary participants, those who walked less than 5000 steps per day. Although the researchers adjusted the data for factors such as age, body mass index and alcohol consumption, they caution that the findings show correlation, not causation. Gait patterns were measured only once, at the start of the study, and unmeasured health problems may have influenced the results.
Still, the authors say the findings reinforce the value of longer walks, especially for people who have difficulty staying active.
