Walking Reduces Risk Of Cardiovascular Disease: How Many Steps Should You Walk Daily?

Walking 8000 steps for even one or two days a week can help lower Cardiovascular Mortality by 15 per cent. Here’s how you can get more steps a day.

Walking is considered one of the best cardio workouts and one of the easiest ways to prevent cardiovascular disease. The simple activity of walking offers numerous health benefits, from strengthening your bones to improving your balance and helping in the management of hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes and other chronic conditions. But the question is: How many steps people should walk daily? 10,000 steps a day or 8000 steps a day?

“It may be intimidating to walk 10,000 steps every day for a person who has never exercised. 8,000 steps twice a week can be a less intimidating and more achievable goal. And, of course, we can build up from there,” says Dr Kaushal Chhatrapati, MD DM, FACC FSCAI FESC, Interventional Cardiologist.

Walking 10,000 steps a day is not achievable for most people

According to Dr Chhatrapati, the concept of walking 10,000 steps a day started as a Marketing gimmick by a Japanese corporation.

“Walking is one of the safest exercises possible. Almost everyone can start walking. It needs a very basic level of fitness. That walking is beneficial is also very obvious. Any exercise is helpful for improving, especially one that is low risk and free. However, 10,000 steps, the originally proposed target, is very steep for most people who are out of shape and who have hardly ever exercised. Hence, newer studies are examining if lower step counts will actually have a similar Cardiovascular benefit in patients,” he adds.

Walking 8000 steps one or two days a week is a good start

The University of California (USA) and University of Kyoto (Japan) undertook a study to find out if walking less than 10,000 steps a day can also offer Cardiovascular benefits.