The first step to take to adding a healthy decade to your long life may literally be… taking steps; Go for a Walk!

Mobility, balance, heart health, weight control, physical fitness, mental wellbeing, stress mitigation, disease avoidance, and many other positive benefits are often associated by scientists and health practitioners with a consistent walking routine.

Walking is….

•  natural
•  inexpensive
•  gym free
•  time independent

Walking is ….inexpensive, almost free! – no need to research a gym and enroll in a membership, no expensive equipment to buy or rent to get started, just put on some comfortable clothes, appropriate footwear, some sun protection, go outside and start walking.  Walk for 10 minutes, an hour, 15 minutes, its all beneficial, in fact it’s surprising just how little walking is needed to start yielding health benefits.

An analysis of 17 separate studies tracking over 226,000 participants showed the health benefits of walking in terms of reducing mortality risk from cardiovascular (CV) related disease begins at just ~2500 steps and just ~4000 steps for reducing all-cause mortality.

As reference, 2500 steps is roughly a 1-mile distance and, depending upon pace, would take approximately 20-30 minutes to complete.  Of course, it could also be done in 3 ~ 10 minute walks throughout a day.

The study goes on to state that for CV risk,  every additional 500 steps above the ~2500 baseline yields an additional 7% reduction in CV mortality risk.  And every 1000 step increment above the ~4000/day baseline yields an additional 15% reduction in all-cause mortality risk.

These numbers are closely corroborated by a similar analysis published in the Journal of American Cardiology which found that health benefits from walking begin between ~2500 ~ 2700 steps per day.  At ~7000 steps per day, the risk of early mortality due to a cardiovascular related incident was reduced by 51%.  And ~9000 steps per day reduced the risk of early mortality by 60%.

So it doesn’t take much, in fact you may already be almost there. However, many of us are not,  living mostly sedentary lifestyles at the desk, on the sofa, or in the car.  It’s best to know, many smartphones, fitness watches and devices today can get us started in monitoring our daily step counts.  It’s fun and healthy to know!  And it can add years to your already long life!