Walking 15 Minutes Cuts Heart Risk 3x — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] A new study in 33,000 people finds that walking longer is better than walking shorter. Now, we've talked about walking a lot over the course of the past several years and the importance of walking, particularly in the post-meal window,

[00:12] for reducing blood sugar levels, for improving blood insulin and glucose responses. And we now know that there is a correlation and independent association with step count and all cause

[00:25] and specifically cardiovascular mortality. And this study really highlights the latter. cardiovascular mortality and how walking longer over the course of nine years is linked with a significantly lower risk and lower probability of having fatal cardiovascular outcomes like a

[00:41] myocardial infarctional heart attack or other complications like a stroke. And so let's dive into it. I think this research is always exciting for a lot of people because walking is an intervention we should all be doing. And I think a lot of people just go out and do a quick walk

[00:55] and they think they're good, you know, they might get their steps. But walking for longer appears to improve the health of the heart and the entire circulatory system. The title of this paper, again, published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine,

[01:08] is Step Accumulation Patterns and Risk of Carboscler Events and Mortality Among Suboptimally Active Adults. And so again this is data drawn from the UK Biobank dataset involving 33 persons and even age was 62 years old and they were tracked or followed for over nine years And the participants were categorized in different buckets having

[01:35] shorter activity bouts under five minutes, having between five and ten minutes of walking, and 10 to shorter than 15 minutes or 15 minutes or greater. Now here's where things get really,

[01:48] really interesting. When we sort of look at the tables and look at the incidence rate of cardiovascular complications and mortality in cardiovascular events, here's kind of the gist here. The people who walked, and this is looking at overall event rate over the course of nine years,

[02:05] the event rate in people who walked for 15 minutes or longer was just 4.39%. So out of 100 people, only four of them over the course of nine years had a cardiovascular event

[02:18] if they walked longer during their walking sessions. And this was looked at daily. Now, compare that to the people who walked for less than five minutes. You know, the person is like, oh my gosh, I've got to sit down. I've been walking for five minutes.

[02:30] My knees hurt. My back hurts. I'm exhausted. 13 out of 100 people had a cardiovascular event in that group over the course of nine years. So when you look at the between group differences here,

[02:42] it almost triple Okay so if you only walk five minutes a day versus walking more than 15 minutes per day over the course of nine years

[02:54] the probability, the statistical probability that you will have a major adverse cardiovascular event is triple if you just do these short little five-minute walks. And so, I mean, this is really, really important to kind of break this down more succinctly

[03:09] to help you better understand the significance of this. I think it's really significant. After about nine years, people who moved more often had healthier hearts. If someone only moved for less than five minutes at a time,

[03:21] about 13 out of 100 people had heart problems over the course of nine years. If you moved between five and ten minutes at a time, and about the event rate over time would be 11 out of 100.

[03:33] Now, if you move between 10 to 15 minutes at a time, that's about 8% event rate out of 100 individuals. Now, if you move for 15 minutes or more, that drops the risk of having a major adverse cardiovascular event to just 4% or 4 out of 100 people.

[03:52] So, we know that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of premature morbidity and mortality here in the U.S. and globally. So, the simplest way to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease is just to walk, but also walk for longer periods of time.

[04:05] As the study found if you walk for 15 minutes or more during your walking sessions that will literally cut your risk of having a major adverse cardiovascular event over time by about threefold

[04:17] And so I think that's really important. The conclusion, again, this is a high-impact journal here, Annals of Internal Medicine, suboptimally active adults who accumulated most of their daily steps in longer bouts

[04:31] had lower mortality and cardiovascular disease risk than those who accumulated most steps in shorter bouts. Now, from a time perspective, walking for 15 minutes versus walking under 5,

[04:44] you know, you're out there walking anyway. Why not just make the walk a little bit longer? And so that's what the research really shows. And so we've reviewed several studies showing that three 15-minute walks

[04:56] is actually more effective than one steady-state 45-minute walk. So it appears that kind of a sweet spot is 15 minutes or more during your walking sessions. So what are your thoughts? Let me know in the comment section below.

[05:08] If you need any other walking-related advice or videos, I will link those in the cards here. We've done so many videos on walking. Yesterday morning, I was actually at a conference in Vegas, and before everything started, I just went out on a strip and just walked three miles.

[05:22] It was, like, really easy and felt amazing all day, even though I continued to walk. So, Locking is Medicine, and we should help spread the good word by sharing this with a friend. If you resonated with this video, we'll catch you on a future one down the road.