Heart Health Benefits The Same For Runners And Walkers, Study Shows

You can run if you want to. But just walking regularly is just as beneficial for your heart health, a new study shows.

Walking was shown to just as effectively reduce the heart health risks like high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol as running, in a health survey of nearly 50,000 runners and walkers of all ages.

The study looked at the energy expended by walking and running over distance and found that runners and walkers who used the same amount of energy had comparable levels of heart health.

"Walking and running provide an ideal test of the health benefits of moderate-intensity walking and vigorous-intensity running because they involve the same muscle groups and the same activities performed at different intensities," Paul T. Williams, the study's principal author said in a press statement from the American Heart Association. 

"The more the runners ran and the walkers walked, the better off they were in health benefits. If the amount of energy expended was the same between the two groups, then the health benefits were comparable," Williams said.

That the more a person exercises the healthier they are is not exactly a revelation, but the findings that health benefits were nearly identical for runners and walkers over a set distance might make some reluctant exercisers more likely to get off the sofa. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that less than half of Americans get enough physical activity. People who feel too out of shape to run may be happy to hear that walking is at least as good for them as running.

In the study, runners were 12.1 percent less likely to be diagnosed with diabetes, compared to 12.3 percent of walkers. Walking reduced coronary heart disease risk by more than 9 percent, compared with 4.5 percent by runners. 

The statement did not address whether or not people who run regularly were in a better state of overall health than walkers, or whether walkers showed such health gains due to a transition from a sedentary to a moderately active lifestyle.