Taking one long walk a day is better for your heart health than taking lots of short strolls, researchers have revealed.
Walking for at least 15 minutes - or for about 1,500 steps - in a single stretch is enough to give your heart a work out. It also cuts the risk of developing cardiovascular disease by two thirds - in comparison to those who do not walk for more than five minutes in one go.
“For the most inactive people, switching from brief walks here and there to longer continuous walks may come with some health benefits,” Co-lead author Dr Matthew Ahmadi at the University of Sydney said.
“There is a perception that health professionals have recommended walking 10,000 steps a day is the goal, but this isn't necessary.
“Simply adding one or two longer walks per day, each lasting at least 10-15 minutes at a comfortable but steady pace, may have significant benefits – especially for people who don’t walk much.”
The study published in the journal Annals of International Medicine looked at 33,560 adults aged between 40 and 79 in the UK who walked less than 8,000 steps a day.
Participants were given a wristband for a week that measured their steps and also how long each individual walk was.
Over eight years researchers from the University of Sydney and the Universidad Europea in Spain, tracked the participants health.
The results showed that among those who took fewer than 8,000 steps per day, those who walked at least 10-15 minutes or longer had a 4 per cent risk of cardiovascular events, such as a heart attack or stroke.
In comparison, participants who took their steps in very short bouts of less than five minutes had a 13 per cent risk of having a cardiovascular incident.
But people who were the least active, and walked 5,000 steps a day or less, benefitted the most from continuous bouts of walking.
Researchers found people in this group halved their risk of developing cardiovascular disease from 15 per cent to 7 per cent just by walking for 15 minutes a day instead of five.
The risk of death also dropped in this group from 5 per cent for those who walked in five-minute stretches during the day to less than 1 per cent for those who walked 15 minutes a day.
Senior author Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis said: “We tend to place all the emphasis on the number of steps or the total amount of walking but neglect the crucial role of patterns, for example ‘how’ walking is done.
“This study shows that even people who are very physically inactive can maximise their heart health benefit by tweaking their walking patterns to walk for longer at a time.”
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