The speed of your walking could give an insight into your health down the road than the sheer number of steps you do each day. Increasing evidence demonstrates that walking speed is a strong indicator of life expectancy, in some cases more reliable than power walking altogether. New findings have revealed that increasing walking intensity, even for brief periods of time, may have a significant beneficial effect on early death rates.
The most obvious indication came from a comprehensive study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The team analyzed activity-tracker readings from over 64,000 middle-aged and elderly Americans and tracked them for an average of nearly 8 years. It analyzed both overall daily step count, as well as the highest average cadence, or number of steps per minute in their most active period of the day. Participants with less than 5,000 steps but faster walking velocities at around 80 steps/minute experienced just under a 28 percent lower risk of any-cause mortality than those who moved at low velocities over a similar step range. The optimal range of 7,500-10,000 steps at just around 100 steps/minute resulted in an approximate 43 percent decreased risk.
The results do not support any notion that 10,000 steps is the only goal worth setting. For those unable to achieve moderate, high levels of daily steps due to lack of time, mobility or life constraints, the data would suggest that there is real benefit to increasing the intensity of their shorter walks. A long walk at a slow pace is helpful but a more intense walk of a shorter duration could be equally if not more effective.
Walking speed is another simple, yet effective, predictor of mortality risk. In a study of over 400,000 UK adults, self-reported walking speed proved to be the best single measure of physical function among several other simple measures of functional ability, performing better than some common clinical measures, like blood pressure and cholesterol, in certain subgroups. Including walking speed in a risk model in place of standard clinical measurements, for people in poor general health, increased model calibration and discrimination. The researchers point out that one-to- two-minute timed walk or single question about usual walking speed could be easily incorporated into a screening assessment to identify those who may warrant closer follow-up or additional intervention.
This association is more durable than just survivalresearch on octogenarians revealed that those with exceptionally brisk gait speed relative to their age peers had about 50% lower risk of cognitive deterioration. Or simply put, brisk walking signifies not only strength and endurance, but also a healthier brain and better neural integration and recruitment, and staying fast may help the body and brain keep pace over the years.
Now, this doesn’t necessarily imply that each walk must be turned into an intense run. Fast walking is usually marked by a pace that increases the heart rate while leaving room for talking (though singing in tune becomes a bit more challenging). Most people find this pace to be approximately 3-4 miles an hour, or roughly 100 steps per minute on intenser intervals. Short bursts of faster walking count.