Fast walking is a key to longevity, research shows – CTV

August 11, 2025

Too busy to go to the gym? Don’t worry — you can stay healthy by incorporating at least 15 minutes of fast walking into your everyday routine, new research suggests.

In general, it’s recommended that people commit to 150 minutes of moderate activity per week to see sufficient health benefits, said Dr. Wei Zheng, the study’s corresponding author. But if 150 minutes is too difficult to manage, fast walking a minimum of 15 minutes every day can have the same health benefits.

Zheng and a team of researchers recruited mostly low-income and Black study participants from 2002 to 2009, according to the study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine. The nearly 85,000 participants were given a comprehensive questionnaire about their exercise habits, average time spent working out, walking speed and health. Then the participants complete a questionnaire about 16 years later, and the analysis began in 2023.

We know “fast walking is good compared to slow walking,” but there isn’t much research on how many minutes you should spend fast walking on average, said Zheng, director of the Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center and the Anne Potter Wilson Professor in Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

Read more: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/fast-walking-is-a-key-to-longevity-research-shows/