The main author, Amanda Paluch, professor of physiotherapy at the UMass Amherst School of Public Health, who leads the international consortium specialized in the subject, “Steps for Health Collaborative”, thus estimates that the risk of cardiovascular event, such as crisis heart attack or stroke is reduced by 40 to 50% in older people who walk between 6,000 and 9,000 steps per day – vs only 2,000 steps per day.
Regular walking to cut your risk of stroke in half
The study which followed more than 20,000 participants aged over 60 for 6 years, confirms this level of benefit and confirms that the risk decreases with the number of steps, therefore a dose-dependent benefit of daily practice.
- In addition, a meta-analysis of 15 studies involving nearly 50,000 people from 4 continents also confirms that walking between 6 and 8,000 steps per day was linked to a lower risk of death from all causes in the elderly;
- However, the analysis does not identify any benefit of walking intensity or the speed at which steps were taken: “we identify no striking associations with walking intensity, no additional benefit of walking speed, walking, beyond the total number of steps”.
“Encouraging less active older people to take more steps is perhaps the most important public health message.”
It is these least active people who have the most to gain, the researchers note: “For those who take 2,000 or 3,000 steps a day, taking a little more can mean a lot for their heart health.”
Future research involving younger adults will now look at the relationship between daily steps and precursor or predictor markers of cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure, obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Because the incidence of these chronic diseases, hitherto “age-related” is rising sharply among young adults.
