You’re walking, but is it straight to the grave?
A growing body of research suggests that this everyday movement can reveal how fast your body and brain are aging — and it might even be able to predict how much time you have left to live.
The good news: There’s an easy at-home test that can show how you stack up. All you need is a stopwatch, a tape measure and your natural stride.
Doctors are increasingly treating gait speed — how fast you walk — as a key vital sign, similar to blood pressure, pulse and body temperature.
“It tells me how well people are functioning, how well their muscles are moving and working together,” Dr. Sara Bonnes, medical director of the Healthy Longevity Clinic at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, told Business Insider.
“We can do complex tests to measure how well people’s physical fitness level is, but this is a smaller, easier version that still tells me: are you moving well and getting around well for your age?” she added.
Walking speed can help doctors assess functional independence or your ability to manage everyday tasks like cooking, shopping, bathing and driving. That becomes a crucial marker as you get older.
It’s also a powerful predictor of future health, from chronic disease to mortality.
“When a person’s normal walking pace declines, it is often associated with underlying health declines,” Christina Dieli-Conwright, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told the BBC.
Brisk walkers, for instance, tend to have healthier hearts. One study found that women ages 50 to 79 who walked at a faster pace had a 34% lower risk of heart failure compared to slow strollers.
In older adults, slower walking speeds have been linked to declining health, reduced mobility, a higher risk of falls and early death.
But you don’t need to be over the hill to glean insights from your walking speed.
Research shows that a sluggish stride in midlife can also reveal how quickly you’re aging, both physically and mentally.
A 2019 study found that 45-year-olds with a slow gait had weaker lungs, compromised immune systems and higher markers of aging — like high blood pressure and cholesterol — compared to their faster-moving peers.
Slow walkers also scored lower on IQ tests and struggled more with memory, reasoning and processing tasks. Brain scans confirmed the cognitive decline was tied to real physical changes in their brains.
Another study linked declining walking speed to an increased risk of developing dementia, compared to those who maintained their pace year after year.
“It does not matter why the walk has slowed. It almost always implies a decline in overall wellness is coming,” Dr. Amit Sachdev, medical director in the Department of Neurology at Michigan State University, told Women’s Health.
Walk this way
Want to see how you measure up? Here’s the test.
Head outside and find a flat stretch of ground. Measure out 16.5 feet (5 meters), then another 33 feet (10 meters) beyond that.
Use the first 16.5 feet as a warmup. When you hit the 33-foot mark, start your stopwatch and walk at your normal pace.
Time how long it takes to walk the full 33 feet. Then divide 33 by the number of seconds it took. That’s your walking speed in feet per second.
Average walking speeds vary by age and sex, with men generally outpacing women. Here’s a quick snapshot to see how you stack up:
Ages 20–29: Men – 4.46 ft/s | Women – 4.4 ft/s
Ages 30–39: Men – 4.69 ft/s | Women – 4.4 ft/s
Ages 40–49: Men – 4.7 ft/s | Women – 4.6 ft/s
Ages 50–59: Men – 4.7 ft/s | Women – 4.3 ft/s
Ages 60-29: Men — 4.7 ft/s | Women — 4.1 ft/s
Ages 70–79: Men – 4.16 ft/s | Women – 3.7 ft/s
Ages 80–89: Men – 3.2 ft/s | Women – 3.1 ft/s
