Walking: the 6th Vital Sign
This everyday activity is emerging as a new window into our overall health.
We’ve all heard that we should aim to walk at least 10,000 steps each day. While the number 10,000 originated from a 1965 Japanese marketing campaign, it is not far from the 7,500 steps per day that provide the majority of the reduction in mortality. The simple act of walking may seem trivial, but it is one of the most valuable steps we can take for our health (pun intended).
It turns out that walking is a powerful indicator of overall well being. In their widely cited 2009 paper, researchers Stacey Fritz and Michelle Lusardi present strong evidence for this connection and go so far as to label walking speed as the "6th vital sign". The authors found that walking speed, much like blood pressure, may both help predict future health events and reflect current physical ailments.
Walking is a complex movement that relies on key physical capacities such as strength, coordination, and aerobic fitness. It also has a close relationship to mental health, benefiting cognition, creativity, and self-confidence. Because of these broad ties, Fritz and Lusardi argue that walking performance, as measured by speed, can be thought of as a new vital sign to provide a clearer picture of our health.
The power of walking lies in its accessibility and its simplicity. It’s free, can be done almost anywhere, and is relatively straightforward to measure. Walking also has the unique advantage of being both a diagnostic tool and a form of medicine. The better we track and understand how we perform this simple daily movement, the more likely we’ll be able to catch health issues and intervene before problems arise.
Walking is one of the first movements we learn and is our primary means of moving through the world. Perhaps its commonplace nature is why we often overlook it when considering our wellbeing. But, as Fritz and Lusardi demonstrate, walking is one of the health fundamentals. The best coaches and athletes in the world know that on the path to high performance, you can’t skip the fundamentals. The same principle applies to our health, so make sure to get those steps in.