That the number of steps you take is linked to a reduced risk of a range of diseases has been shown by many studies. But what is it that gets people who have the opportunity to actually walk? An important part seems to be how the urban environment is planned.
Researchers at the University of Washington have analyzed data from an app that records a number of steps in about 5,400 individuals in 1,600 cities in the USA.
Compared number of steps
Previous studies have shown that those who live in cities that are ranked high on the so-called Walk score, also walk more. It is an established scale from 0 to 100 that is used to indicate how easy it is for people to get to places on foot such as grocery stores and schools.
But now the researchers wanted to find out how it is connected – is it that people who like to walk move to certain types of cities or do certain cities get people to walk more than they would do in other places? The participants in the study were therefore selected because they had moved at least once during the study period. In this way, the researchers could compare the number of steps people walked in different places.
New York – a winner
For example, they saw that 178 of the participants who moved to New York, which has 89 points on the scale, from various cities with an average of 48 points, began to walk more. On average from 5,600 to 7,000 steps per day.
Those who moved from New York to cities with lower points did the opposite – they walked 1,400 fewer steps. Those who move between cities with similar points did not change their step count. The results were similar regardless of age, sex, and body mass index (BMI).
The researchers took into account such things as season and they only included people who lived more than three months in a place.
The results are published in the journal Nature and the researchers behind the study point to the importance for public health of planning cities so that it is easy to walk.
