How Fast Do You Need to Walk For a Healthy Heart?
Walking is a popular form of exercise, and for many good reasons: It’s low impact, doesn’t require travel to a gym, and aside from purchasing a supportive and comfortable pair of shoes—it is free. If done briskly enough, it’s also extremely beneficial to your heart health. A sedentary lifestyle is one of the strongest risk factors for heart disease, so any form of regular exercise, including walking, is better than nothing.
“Sitting is the new smoking,” Liam Murphy, MD, a functional medicine doctor with Melbourne Functional Medicine in Australia, told Verywell. However, experts advise that a casual stroll around the neighborhood may not be intense enough to promote health benefits. Here’s how vigorously you need to be walking.
How to Know If You’re Walking Fast Enough: Most adults will need to walk faster than 3 miles per hour (20-minute miles) to reduce their heart disease risk. However, unless you are on a treadmill, it can be difficult to determine how fast you are going.
Excerpted from Very Well Health
