10,000 STEPS IS NOT ENOUGH! I always state we need at least 8 miles of walking a day or around 15,000 steps because that is what humanity has done for a millennium. More recently, scientist now state that walking 10,000 steps per day which are often suggested as a desirable exercise goal for people who wish to improve their health; is not optimal!

A new study of postal workers in Scotland confirms what I have been telling my patients for years, it suggests that that number could be too conservative and that, to best protect our hearts, many of us might want to start moving quite a bit more. Mail postal carriers who walked for more than three hours a day, covering at least 15,000 steps, which is about eight miles, generally had normal body mass indexes, waistlines, and metabolic profiles. Together, these factors meant that they had, effectively, no heightened risk for cardiac disease.

Of course, my recommendations for walking 15,000 steps a day has more to do with mechanotransduction; converting mechanical energy (movement) into the electrical-chemical signal (nerve impulse) through the movement of the spine. Spinal movement, like a windmill, generates nerve signaling to all the tissues, cells, and organs of the body through this process. Like the Lateral Line System in over 30,000 species of aquatic life, specialized sensors loaded in spinal joints detect movement and convert it into nerve signaling. The proper amount of nerve signaling is responsible for more than cardiovascular health. Nerve signaling through spinal motion subsequently direct and mediate both anabolic (matrix building) and catabolic (matrix degrading) processes. It impacts biosynthesis and even the expression of your genes. More on this when I finish my new book. Nevertheless, this is a great study that proves we are better off living like a hunter-gatherer without leaving modern civilization.

Dr. William Tigbe, a physician and public health researcher at the University of Warwick who led the study.

“It takes effort,” he said, but we can accumulate 15,000 steps a day by walking briskly for two hours at about a four-mile-per-hour pace, he said.

“This can be done in bits,” he adds, perhaps with a 30-minute walk before work, another at lunch, and multiple 10-minute bouts throughout the day.

“Our metabolism is not well-suited to sitting down all the time,” he concluded.