Should I count my steps or the time I exercise? Both work. Be active in any way that works for you.

Rikuta Hamaya, a preventive medicine researcher at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts, recently conducted a study to resolve a contemporary debate: Should we count exercise in steps or time blocks, as the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends?

Rikuta Hamaya is a researcher in the division of Preventive Medicine at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Photo: Rikuta Hamaya — Rikuta Hamaya is a researcher in the department of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, affiliated with Harvard. Photo: Rikuta Hamaya

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that adults engage in at least 150 minutes a week – or half an hour five times a week – of moderate to vigorous physical activity.

This can be a quick walkduring which the heart rate should be maintained at around 110 to 120 beats per minute. If your activity is more intense – jogging for example – 75 minutes a week will be enough.

One in four adults worldwide does not meet this requirement. In Hong Kong, the situation is worse; a study conducted last year it was found that 53 percent of the city’s residents do not devote that much time to it.

Hamaya said his team spotted a gap in current guidelines on physical activity.

They wanted to test whether step count could be as effective in predicting health as time spent exercising, especially among older women.

The World Health Organization recommends getting 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a week. Photo: Shutterstock — The World Health Organization recommends 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per week. Photo: Shutterstock

Steps have been in the spotlight for some time now. The first pedometer – a rather bulky device worn on a belt that counts the number of steps you take – was developed in Japan.

Since then, there have been many advances in step tracking, with apps appearing on personal digital assistants and then smartphones, as well as Fitbit and other fitness trackers.

“As the number of people using the internet increases, smartwatches “to measure step count and overall health, we saw the importance of figuring out how step-based metrics compare to time-based goals in their relationship to health outcomes—is one better than the other?” Hamaya said.

Research shows that wearing a smartwatch encourages people to walk further. Photo: Shutterstock — Studies show that wearing a smartwatch encourages people to walk further. Photo: Shutterstock

In the study he led, researchers analyzed data from an ongoing follow-up study of living participants in the Women’s Health Study, a landmark study that began in 1993 and ended in 2004.

Over a four-year period between 2011 and 2015, more than 14,000 women aged 62 and older were asked to wear an Actigraph accelerometer on their hip for seven consecutive days, removing it only for sleeping, swimming or bathing.

They measured time spent in moderate or vigorous physical activity and the number of steps taken. The researchers examined the associations between each of these measures and all-cause mortality and circulatory system disease.

As Hamaya predicted, taking the recommended number of steps each day was as beneficial as spending the recommended amount of time on physical activity. more time spent exercising and more steps were associated with longer life.

If step count and time are equally good measures, how many steps equate to the recommended 30 minutes a day if you walk regularly?

A brisk walk comes in at around 100 to 120 steps a minute. Photo: Shutterstock — A brisk walk is about 100 to 120 steps per minute. Photo: Shutterstock

To count those steps toward your daily recommendation, they need to be brisk. A brisk walk is about 100 to 120 steps per minute (you can talk, but you shouldn’t be able to sing the words to a song), meaning you could take a little over 3,000 steps in 30 minutes at that pace.

Sure, taking 10,000 steps a day is good for your health, but it’s more than enough to improve them from the get-go.

For example, one study found that taking 3,800 steps a day at a brisk pace (about 30 minutes at 120 or 130 steps per minute) produced measurable benefits associated with a 25 percent improvement in well-being. lower incidence of dementia.

Another study — similar to Hamaya’s in that it relied on data from older women — found that about 4,400 steps had a significant impact on improving health.

The benefits increased to about 7,500 steps and then plateaued. “More steps per day are associated with lower mortality rates up to about 7,500 steps per day,” the study found.

Taking a recommended number of steps each day was found to be as beneficial to health as putting in a recommended amount of time in physical activity. Photo: Shutterstock — Taking the recommended number of steps each day has been shown to be just as beneficial to your health as spending the recommended amount of time being physically active. Photo: Shutterstock

Studies suggest that wearing a fitness tracker is associated with taking more steps – it seems to motivate the wearer to walk with family members or friends, or even with themselves, to improve their step count from the previous day.

A study published in the British Medical Journal found that wearing a tracker encouraged people to take an extra 1,235 steps per day on average, achieving almost 50 minutes of extra moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week.

Ten years ago, the UK’s specialist health university, St George’s in London, ran a trial and published a booklet to encourage people to increase their walking speed and distance. The 12-week Pace Up programme is still relevant and helps motivate people to walk faster and longer 10 years later.

Hamaya, who is 35 and uses a Fitbit to track both his step count and time spent exercising, says the biggest takeaway is that you can improve your health by following guidelines for how much time you spend on moderate to vigorous physical activity, or by meeting the recommended number of daily steps.