Walking briskly could make you feel 16 years younger

IF you’ve spent your life rushed off your feet, you could be duly rewarded.

Walking briskly could make you feel 16 years younger by the time you reach midlife, research suggests.

A study of more than 405,000 adults, with an average age of 56, has revealed a clear link between walking faster and a reduced biological age, which is how old our cells really are. Researchers found participants who walked faster – with mph considered a slow pace, and more than 4mph a brisk one – had longer telomeres. These are the ‘caps’ at the end of chromosomes that protect them from damage, similar to the way the cap at the end of a shoelace stops it from unravelling.

Scientists see the length of the telomere as a marker of biological age, and link it to a range of symptoms associated with ageing, such as frailty. While this specific study, published in Communications Biology, does not indicate that walking faster helps you live longer, previous research has suggested there is a link.

Lead author Dr Paddy Dempsey, of the University of Leicester, suggested adults ‘could aim to increase the number of steps completed in a given time, for example by walking faster to the bus stop’.