Misplace Your Stuff for Better Health

I used to fancy myself a pretty adroit multitasker.  In recent years, however, I have come to understand I am not good at it.  If I engage in several projects at one time, I often find myself fluttering between them with a notable loss of fidelity at each turn.

When I have multiple projects at home (anything on the spectrum between cleaning and remodeling), I end up endlessly wandering from room to room for one of three reasons:

1. To find something I misplaced while working on one of the projects
2. To look around and see if something will remind me why I started wandering in the first place
3. To find where I last placed my cell phone

Turns out all of this wandering about has an upside.  Walking is good for me.  A recent long-term study has quantified this.  

A team or researchers led by physical activity epidemiologist Amanda Paluch from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst tracked over 2,000 middle-aged Black and White men and women, sourced from four different US cities.

According to an article posted at sciencealert.com:

“The group, with an average age of just over 45, wore accelerometers that tracked their daily step count and step intensity during waking hours, as they went about their lives.

The experiment began back in 2005, and participants were followed up at regular intervals in the years up until 2018, by which point 72 of the original group had died.

Most importantly, the researchers found here that individuals taking at least 7,000 steps per day had an approximately 50 to 70 percent lower risk of early death when compared to those who averaged fewer than 7,000 daily steps in the experiment.

By itself, step intensity (measuring the quickness of steps taken) had no effect on mortality.”

7,000 seems to be the magic number for steps.   That number of steps, by the way, carries you a bit over 3 miles in distance, according to my Google machine research.

My typical daily walks carry me a minimum of 4,000 but often closer to 7,000 steps.  Add to that the thousands of steps I take wandering about my house in confusion and you have a recipe for a long and healthy life.   

—Mitchell Hegman

Source: https://www.sciencealert.com (Peter Dockrill)