Walking is a great option as it’s free and you can do it when it suits you, but does it cut the mustard on reducing our all cause mortality? Can we use walking to raise the METs required to keep us healthy and strong for as long as possible?
So, from parts (a) and (b) of the “How Active Are You?” trilogy we know that a sedentary lifestyle will degrade the quality of your health and the number of your days. We learned optimal health requires us to move more and sit less, and, in response to the weight of quality research done on the topic, the Australian Government recommends we do a minimum of five 30 minute sessions of moderate to vigorous activity each week (including two strength sessions).
More specifically, the Australian physical activity and exercise guidelines for all Australians (PAEGA) calls for non-pregnant adults aged 18 to 64 to do:
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Walking is a great option as it’s free and you can do it when it suits you, but does it cut the mustard on reducing our all cause mortality? Can we use walking to raise the METs required to keep us healthy and strong for as long as possible?
The Compendium of Physical Activities (CoPA) lists a plethora of different activities and the amount of energy expended when you do them in terms of Metabolic Equivalent Task units, or METs.
There are 59 different categories for walking in the CoPA. Yes, I counted. The scientists have really teased this out and dug down to the nitty gritty for us. The blue numbers have come from published literature. The red numbers are estimated MET values. Below I have highlighted the walking iterations that will tick those Australian PAEGA boxes for weekly exercise requirements.
Moderate Activity (3.0 – 5.9 METs) ~ yellow
Vigorous Activity (>6 METs) ~ green
However, the research shows that just a stroll will not achieve our wellness goals. Walking a dog that has short legs, for example, or one that insists on stopping to check the wee-mails on every vertical surface, just won’t do. It may contribute to breaking up the sedentary nature of your day and thus does have value, but there needs to be some effort involved to accrue moderate to vigorous METs.
So where does the “10,000 steps” phenomena fit with all this? This made me giggle. It turns out the idea of walking 10,000 steps a day was a marketing strategy created to sell one of the first pedometers, which was created in Japan ahead of the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964. The Japanese symbol for 10,000 looks a bit like a person walking, so the device was called the “Manpo kei” or “10,000 steps meter".
10,000 is an easy number to remember, but “10,000 steps” was not a scientifically measured and proven strategy for maintaining the health of the population. It was a marketer’s whim based on the shape of a Japanese character. Hillarious! For this reason there has been contention in the scientific world for many years over the worth of completing 10,000 steps every day. However, when people set themselves this goal, their health did improve, so there must be something in it, right?
In September 2022 Dr B del Pozo Cruz et al at Sydney University, with teams from Denmark and the UK, published the results of their research into the effects of walking 10,000 steps a day in leading journals (JAMA Internal Medicine and JAMA Neurology). This research finally confirmed that the 1964 Japanese marketers’ bright idea actually does hold water. A nice piece of serendipity there! Here are the Cliff’s Notes from the del Pozo et al papers:
Governments the world over are going to take this literature and translate it into refined PAEGA ~ clarified activity requirements to keep their populace fit and healthy longer. If 10,000 steps each day seems a daunting goal, this research shows us even 2000 steps more in your day will give you a measurable improvement in your health and longevity.
The thing that is missing when it comes to walking and ticking the Australian PAEGA activity requirements is the bit where we are required to include two 30 minute sessions of resistance training in our plan for each week.
Resistance training does not mean resist doing it!! It means a kind of exercise where you work your muscles to build strength and endurance. Walking is resistance training in one context ~ when we walk we are progressing through the earth’s gravity field. In doing so, that force towards the centre of the planet acting on us: makes our postural muscles work to hold us up (keeps muscles strong); triggers our body to create strong bones (protects against osteoporosis, read more here); and challenges our brain to coordinate our frame and maintain our sense of balance (read more here).
The biggest missing element when it comes to walking is resistance training for your upper body. So many people lose upper body strength with time. This contributes to progressive weakness. I see the consequences of this with upper back muscle weakness contributing to forward head carriage and all the pain, shoulder issues, neck problems and headaches associated with that (read more here).
Two possible ways that walking can promote upper body strength include: walking with a weighted backpack (aka "rucking" ~ strength training based on people in the armed forces gaining fitness by hiking with weighted backpacks [though this won’t help arm strength]); or walking through neck deep water swinging your arms ~ working against the resistance of the water (note hand paddles can be used to create even greater resistance to arm movement in this scenario).
Walking is gold. It’s free. You can do it whenever it’s convenient for you. Snippets of time spent walking are valuable to your health regarding movement of your body and breaking up blocks of sedentary behaviour. Bigger chunks of time spent walking briskly will contribute to your Australian PAEGA weekly activity requirements. You just have to make sure the resistance training you do each week addresses your upper body strength too.
Once it was sanitation/hygiene that was the biggest thing people could deal with to decrease their all cause mortality risk and live better healthier lives. In Australia in 2023, one of the biggest things you can do to improve your health status across the board is to walk more.