You need to step it up to protect your heart

So you thought 10,000 steps a day was enough? Well, sorry, it’s not – at least according to the latest research. Seventy years ago we got the first clue about the importance of exercise with the London Transit Workers Study. This famous research tracked the heart health of London bus drivers and conductors. They found the conductors, who were on their feet all day collecting fares, were substantially less vulnerable to heart attacks than the drivers, who sat almost constantly at work. This study was a landmark showing being physically active lowered your risk for heart disease, while being sedentary raised it. But how much exercise? The goal of 10,000 steps a day became the accepted yardstick despite no real scientific validation. To get proof, Warwick University researchers and others decided to compare Glaswegian postmen who deliver letters on foot to sedentary postal office workers. The researchers measured volunteers’ body mass indexes, waist sizes, blood sugar levels and cholesterol profiles, each of which, if above normal, increases the chances of cardiac disease. Each volunteer wore a sophisticated activity tracker for a week, both while at work, and at home and during the weekend. From it the researchers calculated how many waking hours each day the volunteers spent seated or on foot and the number of steps each person took daily. They found some of the office workers sat for more than 15 hours a day, while most of the postmen hardly sat at all. These differences paralleled the volunteers’ risk factors for heart disease. Workers who sat for most of each day had much larger waistlines, higher BMIS, worse blood sugar control and cholesterol profiles than workers who moved about. Furthermore, every hour beyond five that workers sat each day worsened their risk of developing heart disease. Meanwhile, almost any amount of standing and walking lowered this risk. Postmen who walked for more than three hours a day, covering at least 15,000 steps, had the lowest risk of all. Dr William Tigbe, a health researcher at the University of Warwick who led the study, said: “It takes effort but we can accumulate 15,000 steps a day by walking briskly for two hours at about 4mph. “This can be done in bits,” he adds, “perhaps with a 30-minute walk before work, another at lunch, and multiple 10-minute bouts throughout the day. “Our metabolism is not well-suited to sitting down all the time.”

Postmen on 15,000 steps had lowest risk