Most of us know that walking is good for the body, but could it help our minds too?
A long study of more than 3,000 adults has found that people who take more steps each day tended to do better on tests of attention and decision-making. The gaps between the groups were small, and the study can’t prove that walking is the cause. Even so, the results add to the growing evidence that everyday movement is linked with how well we think. Here’s what the researchers did, what they found and what it could mean for you.
Researchers wanted to know if walking impacts more than just our physical health.
A daily step count is an easy way to keep an eye on how much we move, and many of us check ours on a watch or phone without thinking much about it. The team wanted to know whether that number could also say something about our attention and our decision-making skills. They also wanted to see whether blood pressure played a part.
Attention and decision-making matter more than they might sound. They help us concentrate on a job, ignore distractions and make sensible choices, and they affect everything from work to money to health. If moving more is connected with doing better at these things, it would be one more reason to get out of the chair.
How the study worked
The researchers looked at records from 3,093 adults, aged between 18 and 93, with an average age of about 58. They had activity records from fitness trackers and blood pressure readings, collected over a 14-year period. Not everyone had records for the whole time, so the team worked out each person’s usual pattern from the information they had.
Using a tracker is a big advantage. Many earlier studies simply asked people how active they were, and most of us aren’t very good at remembering that. A device gives a more reliable picture of what people really did, day after day, for years.
Three groups of walkers were tracked.
The activity records sorted people into three groups. The least active group averaged about 5,100 steps a day, the middle group about 8,900 and the most active group about 14,200. That gives a handy picture of what low, moderate and high activity looks like in daily life.
After the 14 years of records, everyone took a single round of thinking tests. The researchers then compared the three groups. They were careful to take account of things such as age, education, income and marital status, so that the comparison was as fair as possible.
The tests produced some interesting results.
There were four tasks. They looked at how well people could keep their attention on something for a long time, how well they could ignore distractions, how they chose between a reward now and a bigger one later, and how well they could recognise emotions on faces. The two more active groups did better than the least active group on the attention, distraction and reward-choice tasks.
The differences were modest, though. On the attention task, for example, the scores were a couple of points higher in the middle and most active groups. Reading faces showed no clear difference between the groups at all. That means the link seems to apply to some thinking skills and not others.
The findings are relevant to how we live our daily lives.
These skills are used all the time, even if we don’t notice. Keeping your mind on a task, avoiding impulse buys and sticking with long-term plans, such as saving money or following a health routine, all draw on the same abilities that the tests measured. The researchers suggest that being more active may be linked with doing better at these everyday jobs.
It’s important to say that the study didn’t look at real-life behaviour directly. It didn’t check how people got on at work or how they handled their money. It only measured performance on tests, so the real-world effect is still unknown.
What about blood pressure?
Blood pressure showed a narrower link. People with a higher top number, called systolic pressure, tended to do slightly worse on the task about choosing between rewards. The bottom number, called diastolic pressure, wasn’t clearly linked with any of the four tests once other factors were taken into account.
The team found that lower systolic pressure could explain only about 5 per cent of the link between steps and reward choices. That doesn’t mean that bringing down your blood pressure will sharpen your mind. It simply suggests that blood pressure is a small part of a bigger picture.
We can’t say walking alone led to the results.
The researchers put forward some ideas about why activity and thinking might go together. These include better blood sugar control, less inflammation in the body and a brain that adapts more easily. None of these ideas was tested in this study, so they remain guesses for now.
The study also has limits. It was observational, which means it can show a link without proving a cause. People’s thinking was measured only once, so it’s not possible to say whether anyone’s skills had improved or declined. People who think more sharply to begin with might also find it easier to stay active. The study couldn’t take account of smoking or weight, and most of the people taking part were white, around two thirds were women and nearly all had been to college, so the results may not apply to everyone.
What it means for your daily steps
The researchers are clear that this study can’t say how many steps you need for a sharper mind. There’s no magic number in it, and it wasn’t designed to find one. What it does suggest is that being more active over many years goes along with better attention and decision-making, and more research is planned to find out if the link holds up.
If you want to move more, you don’t need to leap to 14,000 steps. Start by finding out roughly what you do now, then add a little each week, such as a walk around the block after lunch or a stroll with a friend. Choose comfortable shoes, take it at your own pace and speak to your doctor before making big changes if you have a health condition. Walking is free, simple, and good for the body, so any benefit for the mind is a welcome extra.
