New research finds four minutes of walking per day halves heart attack risk in women
Research backing up the benefits of walking keeps on coming.
Just this month, we’ve discovered regular walks could add a decade to your life, double your rate of fat loss, and reduce your chance of catching a cold. Now, an even newer study has found that just four minutes of brisk walking per day could halve the risk of heart attacks in women.
Here’s everything you need to know.
The study’s methods
The study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, used data from 81,052 middle-aged people taking part in the UK Biobank study. Participants wore an activity tracker for seven days between 2013 and 2015 and had their vital signs and exercise levels monitored. 22,368 people reported doing no regular exercise or going for a walk just once per week.
Their heart health was tracked for eight years, until November 2022, during which time 3.7% of the group suffered a heart attack, stroke, developed heart failure or died of heart disease.
The study’s findings
The researchers found that there was a 51% reduction in heart attacks among women who recorded just 3.4 minutes of ‘vigorous intermittent’ exercise, like brisk walking or climbing the stairs, each day.
These women also suffered 67% fewer cases of heart failure, with a 45% overall reduction in heart disease, compared to those who didn’t exercise at all. Perhaps, most notably, the women who experienced the benefits also didn’t record any formal exercise. What’s more, the exercise they did do was qualified as ‘vigorous intermitted lifestyle physical activity’ that ‘embeds into daily life’ – it’s the stuff you don’t even realise you’re doing, also known as NEAT exercise.
Even just 90 seconds of the aforementioned ‘vigorous’ activity on a daily basis meant that the risk of heart problem fell by almost a third.
What does this mean for us?
The study’s authors concluded that ‘vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity may be a promising physical activity target for cardiovascular disease prevention, particularly in women unable or not willing to engage in formal exercise’. They added that the findings were particularly important for women, since females tend to have a lower level of cardiorespiratory fitness than men at any given age, and so it’s encouraging that the minimum threshold for measurable effects may be lower than we thought.
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