Seven Miles A Day For Heart Health? Really?

Yes really. That’s the recommendation of researchers at the University of Warwick, who outfitted 111 healthy postal workers with activity monitors for seven days, then tracked their activity and compared their waist circumferences and BMIs. One group of 55 were office workers, and one group of 56 walked a mail route each day. Science Daily reports that the researchers found that those who had desk jobs had a bigger waist circumference — 97 cm compared to 94 cm — and approximately one BMI unit difference. The researchers also found that the sitters had a higher risk of cardiovascular disease — 2.2 percent compared to 1.6 percent over ten years, and they calculated that bad cholesterol (LDL) increases and good cholesterol (HDL) decreases with each additional hour of sitting from five hours a day. And now the discouraging part. The levels of triglycerides and DL cholesterol associated with zero risk factors for heart disease were walking more than 15,000 steps per day–yes that’s seven to eight miles, or spending seven hours per day standing or walking.