Physical inactivity has become part of everyday life for many people, especially due to sedentary work and transportation.
For this reason, health advice has for years focused on simple targets such as 8,000 or 10,000 steps per day.
However, according to new research, not all steps necessarily have the same effect on health.
A large British study now provides a more nuanced picture of how walking is linked to health, according to the American College of Physicians.
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What the researchers examined
The study is based on data from the UK Biobank and includes 33,560 adults, all of whom were relatively physically inactive.
The participants walked an average of fewer than 8,000 steps per day and were followed for nearly ten years.
According to the researchers, who published the results in Annals of Internal Medicine, participants were grouped based on how they distributed their walking.
Some walked in many short intervals, while others took longer, continuous walks.
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What the results showed
The results showed that people who walked for longer, uninterrupted periods had a lower risk of both premature death and cardiovascular disease.
The risk gradually declined as the walks became longer, regardless of how many total steps the participants took.
According to the researchers, this suggests that the body benefits more from continuous movement than from many short bouts of walking.
What it means in practice
The effect was most pronounced among the most sedentary participants, particularly those with fewer than 5,000 steps per day.
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For this group, longer walks made a noticeable difference.
The study therefore suggests that for less active adults, a daily, continuous walk may be more important than chasing a specific step count.
Sources: Science Daily, and Annals of Internal Medicine.
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