Walking for cardiovascular health

Walking for cardiovascular health

Walking is a common form of physical activity that many people use to improve their cardiovascular health.

8,000-10,000 steps 👣 is considered a daily “walking norm” for a healthy heart. However, current European guidelines on physical activity have not yet published specific recommendations for the optimal number of steps per day needed for cardiovascular health.

Consider a meta-analysis of 17 studies with almost 227,000 participants with a median follow-up of 7.1 years.

Study objective 📌:

To assess the association between step count, cardiovascular mortality, and all-cause mortality.

The primary endpoints were all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality and their association with different quartiles of steps.

Results ✅:

✔️A 1,000-step increase correlated with a significant 15% reduction in all-cause mortality

✔️A 500-step increase correlated with a 7% reduction in cardiovascular mortality

✔️Even 2,500-4,000 steps per day reduces the risk of developing diseases

Related study results:

✔️8,763 steps per day to reduce the risk of all-cause mortality

✔️ 7,126 steps to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease

So what conclusions can we draw🤔

This is the first analysis to consider not only age and gender, but also regional differences depending on weather zones, and the first to estimate the impact of up to 20,000 steps per day on outcomes (confirming that the more steps taken, the better), which was assumed in previous analyses.

The findings prove that we don't need that many steps to have health benefits, starting even with 2,500-4,000 steps per day, which actually undermines the current definition of a sedentary lifestyle.