Senior News Line: Speeding up our walking

Is it 10,000 steps per day we need to walk? Or is it 6,000 to 8,000? Or can we get by with only 3,000 to 4,000 steps each day?

The answer, apparently, is that it depends on who is giving us those numbers.

That 10,000 number started as an advertising ploy. Back in 1965 a Japanese company created a pedometer, or step counter, and the name of it was similar to the 10,000 number in Japanese.

It caught on from there as a goal to strive for, without much — or anything — in the way of actual research behind it.

We’ve been faced with everybody throwing out a number they claim is the optimum one for us to lower our risk of heart disease and risk of death — leaving us confused about our best number.

Now, however, there might be something much simpler: Instead of counting steps, a new study has shown that increasing our walking speed might be just as good as walking many thousands of steps each day at a slower speed.

Specifically, what they discovered is that walking fewer than 5,000 fast steps every day could be as good as walking 5,000 to 7,500 slower steps.

And how fast is fast? According to the study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, aiming for 80 steps per minute for fewer than 5,000 steps is as good as 60 steps per minute for over 5,000 steps.

The study had tens of thousands of participants with their information pulled from the UK Biobank, a worldwide database with the information on a half million volunteers, so this was a significant study.

To quote one of the study reviewers: “The biggest health gains often come from going from no activity to some activity. Even a few minutes of movement a day can start to improve your overall health and longevity.”