- A long walk may provide greater heart and longevity benefits than multiple shorter walks, even if you cover the same number of steps.
- A new study finds that a 10–15-minute walk lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease and death compared to frequent shorter walks throughout the day.
- The findings suggest that the way you walk may matter as much as how much you walk.
A new study suggests that a long daily walk may benefit your heart and overall health more than several shorter walks.
The research, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, shows that how you exercise — not just how many steps you take — affects the health benefits gleaned from daily physical activity.
In a large prospective cohort study of people who were less physically active (fewer than 8,000 steps per day), participants who got most of their daily steps in through a longer walk, 15 minutes or more, had a significantly lower risk of death than those who got their steps through brief walking bouts shorter than five minutes.
The benefit also applied to cardiovascular events such as heart attacks — people who took longer walks had a substantially lower risk than those who took shorter walks.
“Walking more is good for your heart — and if you can occasionally sustain a walk for 10–15 minutes, all the better,” said Evan Brittain, MD, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who wasn’t involved in the research.
“Among people who average fewer than 8,000 steps per day, those who have an intentional practice of walking (whether they call it exercise or not) have better outcomes compared with those who walk for shorter periods,” he told Healthline.
The study, and others like it at the intersection of exercise science and preventive medicine, could eventually help reshape physical activity recommendations.
The study followed 33,560 adults from the UK Biobank, a large health research database.
About 41% of participants were males, and their average age was 62. All participants were free of cardiovascular disease and cancer at the start of the study, which began between 2013 and 2015.
Those included in the study took fewer than 8,000 steps a day at the start of the trial, which researchers classified as “suboptimally active” based on current
For a seven-day period, participants recorded their daily activity with a fitness tracker.
The researchers’ primary interest was how the duration of daily physical activity bouts affected mortality and cardiovascular disease.
To investigate this, participants were categorized into four groups based on their “step accumulation pattern,” which described how long their walking bouts lasted to achieve most of their daily steps.
In other words, did they engage in longer walks or more frequent, shorter ones throughout the day?
The four-step accumulation groups were:
- shorter than 5 minutes
- 5 minutes to shorter than 10 minutes
- 10 minutes to shorter than 15 minutes
- 15 minutes or longer
Most participants (about 43%) accumulated their steps in bouts lasting less than five minutes. Only 8% engaged in long walks of 15 minutes or more.
Despite relatively few people taking long walks, the study suggests they reaped the greatest benefits.
Over an average follow-up of 8 years, the cohort had 735 deaths and 3,119 cardiovascular events, disproportionately affecting the short walk group. Those who preferred the shortest walks (under 5 minutes) had 4.36% all-cause mortality. That fell to just .80% in the long walk group (15 minutes or longer), an 83% lower relative mortality risk.
Cardiovascular disease risk followed a similar pattern. Participants who took short walks had a 13% rate of cardiovascular events, compared with 4.39% among those in the long-walk group — roughly one-third the risk.
Despite these compelling findings, the research comes with some caveats. Brittain notes that there are limitations to the study’s design and observational nature.
“We should be cautious about assuming a short snapshot of step data predicts events nearly a decade later,” he said. “We need more longitudinal and real-world physical activity data from patients seeking care.”
The authors admit that it’s not clear why, from a physiological perspective, longer walks would promote greater health benefits. However, they suggest that longer bouts may be necessary to activate key components of the body’s cardiometabolic systems, such as insulin sensitivity.
While the findings suggest that longer walks may offer greater health benefits than shorter ones, any exercise is better than none.
However, this should make you consider taking time specifically for physical activity rather than just incidental exercise from your daily activities.
“While any activity is better than none for maximal benefit, folks who are more sedentary likely need to be exercising with intention — getting quality exercise bouts as opposed to hitting a specific step count,” said Sarah F. Eby, MD, PhD, a sports medicine specialist at Mass General Brigham Sports Medicine and assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School. Eby wasn’t involved in the research.
Strategies for how you can incorporate more (and longer) walks into your day, according to Brittain, include:
- taking a 10–15 minute walk after a meal
- parking farther away from your destination and walking
- scheduling calls during walks
- inviting coworkers for walking meetings
If you’re trying to get a little extra boost out of your walk, you can also try “Japanese walking,” an interval walking exercise designed to gently get your heart rate up.
Despite walking being generally accessible, Eby points out that for some individuals, that may not be the case.
Some individuals may only find they have time for daily exercise through shorter bouts of activity. Socioeconomic status is also a factor.
“Folks with lower income levels tend to have less flexibility with work schedules and often live in more polluted areas that lack adequate, safe, walking infrastructure,” Eby said.
Additionally, for people with certain conditions, like knee arthritis, long walks may not be an ideal form of daily physical activity.
“Anytime I’m working with patients, I like to explore their values and goals to craft an exercise regimen with these in mind. If we can find a way to make exercise meaningful or enjoyable for the otherwise exercise-hesitant individual, that will go a long way in promoting adherence to regular exercise,” Eby said.
