For years, doctors have stressed the importance of being active during your day—after all, research has found that sitting for too long raises your risk of a slew of serious health conditions, including cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. But the idea of going for hour-long walks can be overwhelming. Now, new research suggests you don’t need to jam in a massive stroll into each day: Instead, you can go for “micro-walks.”
That’s the main takeaway from a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, which found that micro-walks may be even better for you than long ones. Here’s the deal.
In this study, a “micro-walk” is defined as walking between 10 and 30 seconds at a time (with breaks in between your next walk).
It depends on how you’re looking at it. In this particular study, volunteers walked on a treadmill or climbed a short flight of stairs for different periods of time, ranging from 10 seconds to four minutes. The study participants wore masks to measure their oxygen intake (which can be used to calculate energy or calorie consumption).
