If you’ve had heart failure, start stepping out more.
Walking up to 5000 steps a day reduces symptoms and physical limitations, such as breathlessness and fatigue.
There are “significant improvements” in patients who walk anything between 1000 and 5000 steps a day, although the benefits seem to stop there and don’t increase by walking more than that, say researchers from the University of Michigan.
They tested the benefits of walking with the help of 400 heart failure patients who were given activity monitors that counted their daily steps and floors climbed over the 12 weeks of the study. There were big improvements in symptoms for every additional thousand steps the participants took, up to 5000 steps. The number of stairs that were climbed didn’t have a significant impact on symptoms.
