Be active! Do your 30 minute of daily exercise if you want to be healthy! These are words you often hear from TV and radio programs, from your doctor’s mouth or even from your friends. They all encourage you to exercise moderately, but they should also give you a hint on what “moderately” means.

 

“Most people are familiar with the recommendation to get 30 minutes of exercise most days. Fewer people know that needs to be moderate intensity, and fewer still know what that means,” said Dr. David Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine.

 

The explanation comes from researchers at San Diego State University led by Simon J. Marshall, an assistant professor of exercise and nutritional sciences. Together they enlisted 58 women and 39 men, with an average age of 32, to walk on treadmills while a machine measured their energy expenditure. They wanted to determine what level of activity was in the moderate range.

 

Generally, men needed to walk at a pace of 92 to 102 steps per minute to achieve a moderately intense workout for their hearts. The range for women was between 91 and 115 steps per minute.

 

“Because health benefits can be achieved with bouts of exercise lasting at least 10 minutes, a useful starting point is to try to accumulate 1000 steps in 10 minutes, before building up to 3000 steps in 30 minutes,” said Simon Marshall, lead researcher.

 

The findings of the study appear in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.