We all know walking is good for our body and mind, but new research suggests pace may be more important than putting in 10,000 steps a day.
Thomas Yates, a professor in physical activity, sedentary behaviour and health, from the University of Leicester, England, investigated the health benefits of a daily walk.
In research to be published in Communication Biology, he found that people who adopted a quick pace can have a biological age 15 years younger than those who take their time on their daily outing.
Prof, Yates and his team at the National Institute for Health Research Leicester Biomedical Research Centre looked at the length of telomeres, the protective structures at the end of chromosomes, in 405,981 middle-aged adults in the UK.
As we grow older, our telomeres shorten – a process compounded by poor diet, smoking, drinking and inactivity – which results in accelerated cell ageing.
“The more these telomeres shrink, the more likely things are to go wrong with our health,” said Prof. Yates. “If we can keep them lengthy for as long as possible it acts as a buffer against ageing.”
What they found was that brisk walking helped to preserve telomere length.
10,000 steps a day is out of date advice
Their findings follow a review and analysis of 15 studies on walking involving almost 50,000 people that was published this week. Amanda Paluch, a physical activity epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a team of US academics confirmed that daily walking improves health and longevity.
But they also discovered that more daily steps are better only up to a point, suggesting that the commonly held view that we need to take 10,000 daily steps is out of date.
For adults under 60, Paluch showed a daily total of 8,000-10,000 steps was optimal for reducing risk of early death while 6,000-8,000 steps were sufficient for the over-60s to reap the same benefits.
“We saw this incremental reduction in risk as steps increase, until it levels off,” she said. “And the levelling occurred at different step values for older versus younger adults.”
Time to go for a brisk walk?
