- Researchers are reporting that adding even an extra 500 to 1,000 steps per day to your exercise routine can improve your cardiovascular health.
- They add that walking more than 4,000 steps per day can reduce your risk of dying from any cause.
- Experts say walking is a good choice for daily exercise because it’s low cost and is easy to do.
- They recommend people gradually increase their steps every week rather than make a sudden jump.
The risk of dying from any cause decreases significantly with every additional 500 to 1,000 steps a person takes per day.
That’s according to research published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
In their study, researchers reported that walking at least 3,967 steps per day reduced the risk of dying from any cause while walking 2,337 steps a day reduced the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
“Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better,” Maciej Banach, the author of the study and a professor of cardiology at the Medical University of Lodz, Poland, and an adjunct professor at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Maryland, said in a press statement.
“We found that this applied to both men and women, irrespective of age, and irrespective of whether you live in a temperate, sub-tropical or sub-polar region of the world, or a region with a mixture of climates,” he added. “In addition, our analysis indicates that as little as 4,000 steps a day are needed to significantly reduce deaths from any cause and even fewer to reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease.”
The researchers reported that the more steps a person walked, the greater the health benefits, even up to 20,000 steps a day. The researchers have yet to determine an upper limit of steps.
“In a world where we have more and more advanced drugs to target specific conditions such as cardiovascular disease, I believe we should always emphasize that lifestyle changes,…
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