Step from HBP-related deaths

Former model Christy Turlington was one of the first people in the world to own an Apple Watch. Unlike other celebrities who showed them off for status or fashion, Turlington used her wearable tech while she ran the 2015 Kilimanjaro Half Marathon in Tanzania.

Fortunately, you don’t have to put your smartwatch to such exotic (and taxing) use to gain its benefits. Researchers used a smartwatch to track step counts of 638 adults enrolled in the ongoing Framingham Heart Study and found that folks who took 10,000 steps a day had meaningfully lower blood pressure compared with those taking fewer steps. That’s important since research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology finds that rates of death related to high blood pressure escalated by 72% in rural areas and 20% in urban areas of the U.S. between 2007 and 2017.

Walkers in the Framingham Study who got in 10,000 steps daily had a systolic blood pressure that was 2.25 points lower than those walking only 5,000 steps. And that can help decrease your risk of stroke or heart attack.

So, if you’re one of the 78 million U.S. adults with high blood pressure, step up to the challenge of using a smartwatch or pedometer to help you meet your daily goal of 10,000 steps or the equivalent. Combine that with a plant-based diet (no red or processed meat or added sugars) and 10 minutes of daily meditation. Who knows, you might just hike up Kilimanjaro one day after all.