Walking just 14 more steps per minute could protect against rising chronic conditions
Researchers at the University of Chicago tracked 102 frail adults — weaker individuals who are exhausted by little exercise — in their late 70s who were asked to do a 45-minute walking session three times a week.
Over the four-month study, half were asked to continue walking at a 'relaxed and comfortable pace' during the exercise sessions.
But the rest were told to walk 'as fast as they safely could'.
Participants in the 'fast-walking' group walked 14 more steps every minute on average by the study end, and about 100 steps per minute — equivalent to the average among adults.
The fast-walking group achieved a ten percent improvement in their six-minute walking distance, indicating enhanced endurance and cardiovascular health.
This improvement also suggested increased muscle mass and a lower risk of falls, the leading cause of injury-related death in adults over 65, as well as improved aerobic fitness, a key predictor for longevity and sustained independence in older age.
For comparison, those who walked at a relaxed pace saw no improvement in either measure during the study.
Dr Daniel Rubin, an anesthesiologist who led the study, and others wrote: 'We demonstrated that an increase of 14 steps per minute during the intervention sessions increased the odds of an improvement in [endurance].
'Older adults can increase their [steps per minute] and [steps per minute] can serve as a surrogate measure of activity intensity during walking interventions.'
Average adults walk about 100 to 130 steps per minute, according to estimates, while older and frail individuals walk about 82 steps per minute on average.
The average American also walks about 5,100 steps per day, well below the recommendation of 10,000 every 24 hours.
In the paper, published in PLOS One, researchers recruited adults from 14 retirement homes near the university.
The study defined a frail adult as an individual with weight loss, slowness, weakness, exhaustion and someone who undertook little physical activity.
Of the participants, only 35 percent were able to walk unaided with the remainder requiring a cane, walker, scooter or wheelchair at times.
They were divided into two equal groups for walking sessions, the fast group or the relaxed group, with each led by a trained research assistant.
Over the first three sessions, adults were asked to walk 45 minutes at a comfortable pace.
In the next eight sessions, participants were asked to walk 40 minutes, and start and end each session with five minutes of stair tapping — stepping and quickly tapping the toes of each foot on the edge of a step.
During the walking, those in the fast-walking group were also asked to increase their intensity until they reached 70 percent of their heart rate maximum.
The heart rate maximum is the highest number of times the heart can beat in one minute during strenuous physical activity. It is calculated using the formula of 220 minus someone's age.
For those in the study, their maximum heart rate would be around 147 beats per minute and 70 percent of this would be 103 beats per minute.
Over the remaining sessions, participants were asked to walk for 35 minutes but begin each session with a 10-minute warm up.
But those in the exercise group were asked to incrementally increase their speed during the walking sessions to 'as fast as they safely could.'
Participants' walking was tracked using an activPAL tracker that was strapped onto their thigh, which measured steps and speed.
They were able to stop to rest during the exercises, but this stopped the timer, which would not restart until they began to walk again.
Researchers found that among those in the relaxed group, their steps decreased during the study from 82 to 77 steps per minute.
For comparison, those in the exercise group saw this rise from 86 to 100 steps per minute on average.
Participants were asked to complete the six-minute walk test at the start and end of the study to measure their endurance.
In the relaxed group, participants saw a slight improvement, with the distance they walked increasing from 836 to 869 feet.
For comparison, however, those in the exercise group saw the distance they walked increase from 843 to 1,033 feet per session - a 10 percent rise.
For comparison, the average American adult can walk around 2,100 feet in six minutes.
The team concluded: 'The overall exercise dose (frequency, duration, and intensity) between the two groups only differed with respect to the intensity component as frequency and duration were kept constant between the two groups.
'Thus, prefrail and frail older adults engaged in walking interventions can derive further improvement in their functional outcomes by increasing [steps per minute] during a fixed volume of walking exercise.'
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Aging.
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