A new large-scale study suggests that grouping daily steps into longer, continuous walks of at least 15 minutes may offer greater benefits for health and longevity than spreading activity throughout the day.
The research, published last month, examined how patterns of daily physical activity are associated with risks for premature death and heart disease.
While it will be no surprise that more exercise helps heart health, the findings will be food for thought to those who seek to meet their daily ‘steps’ count through multiple bursts of short walks.
The data indicated that middle-aged and older participants who organized some of their steps into walks lasting 15 continuous minutes or more were about half as likely to develop heart disease in the near term compared to those who rarely walked for that duration. These individuals taking longer walks also showed a lower likelihood of dying from any cause during the years-long study period.
Emmanuel Stamatakis, a professor of physical activity, lifestyle and population health at the University of Sydney in Australia and the study’s lead author, underscored the complexity of activity patterns. “With physical activity, we know that the more the better,” he told the Washington Post, ”But we haven’t had a very good understanding of the role of the pattern” of that activity.
Stamatakis said the goal of the research was “about identifying ways to maximize what people get out of their walking”.
The scientists utilized the UK Biobank, a large repository of British health records, focusing on participants who reported they did not formally exercise and whose activity trackers showed they typically accumulated fewer than 8,000 steps daily. The researchers categorized participants based on whether their longest daily walk was five or fewer minutes, 10 minutes, or 15 minutes or more.
The results demonstrated a clear association: those who walked for 15 continuous minutes or more had the lowest risks of heart attacks, other cardiovascular problems, and early death. Furthermore, individuals who walked for 10 uninterrupted minutes tended to live longer and experience less heart disease than those whose longest walk was only five minutes. These beneficial effects were observed even among people who took the same total number of steps each day.
Researchers speculate that longer walking bouts “meaningfully activated” and altered participants’ cardiovascular and metabolic systems in ways that briefer walks could not. Darren Warburton, an exercise scientist at the University of British Columbia, told the Post that the findings were “a very insightful and important epidemiological paper that sheds further light into the importance of being physically active”.
The study notes that it shows association, not direct cause and effect, meaning it cannot definitively prove longer walks cause better health outcomes. However, the findings suggest that amplifying the benefits of daily steps by walking longer is possible. Current physical activity guidelines recommend 150 minutes a week of moderate activity, such as brisk walking. Despite that long-standing health advice, Stamatakis said that “75 to 80 percent of people are insufficiently active,” failing to meet those guidelines.
While longer walks appear beneficial, co-author I-Min Lee stressed the importance of overall activity.
“We have a lot of data from other studies showing that any amount of physical activity is good,” she said.
“If you have a choice and are able to, try to walk for more than 10 minutes at a time,” but concluded that ultimately, “the total amount of activity is what matters more than the pattern in which it’s accumulated”.