{"id":1208105,"date":"2023-12-01T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-01T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1208105"},"modified":"2023-12-01T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T18:00:00","slug":"how-fast-you-need-to-walk-to-get-real-health-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1208105","title":{"rendered":"How Fast You Need to Walk to Get Real Health Benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Walking is one of the more accessible forms of exercise. Not only can you do it without special equipment or memberships, you may even <em>already<\/em> get your steps in without formally considering it to be a workout. But how fast do you have to walk for it to \u201ccount\u201d toward improving your health? New research may have an answer.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bjsm.bmj.com\/content\/early\/2023\/11\/14\/bjsports-2023-107336\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"(opens in a new window)\"><u>The meta-analysis<\/u><\/a>, published this week in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, compared the risk of type 2 diabetes for people who walked at different speeds. (In many cases, people were asked to report how fast they walked; in others, they wore activity trackers like Fitbits or completed a timed walking test at a clinic visit.) Here\u2019s how they categorized the various walking speeds:\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Easy or casual walking<\/strong>: less than 2 miles per hour (30:00 per mile)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Average or normal walking<\/strong>: 2-3 miles per hour (20:00-30:00 per mile). This corresponds to the 3 mph that Google Maps uses to estimate travel time when they give you walking directions.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Fairly brisk walking<\/strong>: 3-4 miles per hour (15:00-20:00 per mile)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Brisk\/striding walking<\/strong>: 4 miles per hour or faster (15:00 per mile)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Many people find that 4 miles per hour is about the fastest they can walk without breaking into a run. (This will, of course, depend on personal factors like how long your legs are.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In this analysis, people who walked at an average or \u201cfairly brisk\u201d pace were less likely to develop type 2 diabetes later. (The average follow-up time period was eight years.) The faster people walked, the better, with brisk\/striding walking being associated with a 39% lower risk of type 2 diabetes compared to easy or casual walking. <\/p>\n<p>Based on these results, you&#8217;d want to walk faster than 2 miles per hour, if you can. (2.5 miles per hour is the speed that&#8217;s usually considered to count as &#8220;moderate&#8221; intensity exercise.) But the authors note that their results are of \u201clow to moderate certainty, mainly from studies with a high risk of bias,\u201d which means we might need to take them with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n<h2>Why does walking speed matter?<\/h2>\n<p>This isn\u2019t the first study to compare walking speed to health outcomes. Previous studies have found that people who walk faster are less likely to have strokes, to die of cardiovascular disease, or to develop cognitive decline or dementia.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But does walking <em>protect<\/em> you, or is it just a sign that you\u2019re already healthy? Possibly both.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A group of physical therapists wrote in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC4254896\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"(opens in a new window)\"><u>2015 review<\/u><\/a> that \u201cNot only is [walking speed] indicative of an individual\u2019s functional capacity and general health status, the measure has been shown to be predictive of a range of outcomes, including response to rehabilitation, functional dependence, frailty, mobility disability , cognitive decline, falls, institutionalization, hospitalization, cardiovascular-related events and mortality, as well as all-cause mortality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In other words, it\u2019s possible that walking speed is just a stand-in for overall health. If you\u2019re too sick to walk very fast, your health may already be declining. But we also know that exercising is good for your health, and that exercising tends to make you better at exercising.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lifehacker.com\/does-walking-really-count-as-cardio-1846965965\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><u>Walking is cardio<\/u><\/a>, after all, <em>if<\/em> you walk at an appropriate speed. If you don\u2019t get much exercise, a normal walking speed of 2.5 miles per hour is enough to count as \u201cmoderate\u201d exercise (the kind <a href=\"https:\/\/lifehacker.com\/how-much-exercise-do-i-really-need-1823708126\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><u>we should all do for at least 150 minutes a week<\/u><\/a>, or about 20-30 minutes per day). Jogging or fast walking can count for some of your \u201cvigorous\u201d exercise minutes, which count double.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, we don\u2019t have a perfect way to measure the amount of exercise necessary for health. Step counting has been a favorite because it\u2019s easy to measure with a pedometer, a smartwatch, or even by keeping your phone in your pocket. Walking speed helps here, too: the faster you walk, the more steps you\u2019ll get in.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But still: we already know that <a href=\"https:\/\/lifehacker.com\/10-000-steps-is-a-bullshit-goal-1828861391\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><u>10,000 steps is a bullshit goal<\/u><\/a>; the number of steps you need to improve your health <a href=\"https:\/\/lifehacker.com\/how-many-steps-you-really-need-to-take-each-day-accord-1849535168\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><u>ranges from 2,800 to 9.800<\/u><\/a>, depending on which study you\u2019re reading and how they defined their health-related outcomes. Most medical and fitness professionals will tell you that the more you can walk, the better\u2014and that if you currently walk slowly, you\u2019ll likely be able to walk faster as you become fitter.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\nSource: LifeHacker &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/lifehacker.com\/health\/how-fast-you-should-be-walking\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">How Fast You Need to Walk to Get Real Health Benefits<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Walking is one of the more accessible forms of exercise. Not only can you do it without special equipment or memberships, you may even already get your steps in without formally considering it to be a workout. But how fast &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1208105\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,110],"tags":[92],"class_list":["post-1208105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifehacker","category-unfiltered-rss","tag-lifehacker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1208105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1208105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1208105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1208105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}