10,000 steps a day to a healthy heart: ... and likely a trimmer waist. (Healthy Lifestyles).(Brief Article)

For years, people thought that only sweaty, heart-pounding exercise was aerobic enough to do your heart any good. But that concept began to collapse when scientists discovered that people who walked briskly for 30 minutes or more a day had a noticeably reduced incidence of heart disease.

One of the major factors was a dramatic Boston study, analyzing more than 120,000 women, which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1999. It showed that walking three or more hours a week cut women's threat of heart disease by a striking 30 percent; five or more hours cut it by an even more impressive 40 percent.

Meanwhile, an intriguing new walking program was developed in Japan. Called "10,000 Steps a Day," all it takes is a good pair of walking shoes and a $15 pedometer that dips to your belt. The idea has caught on quickly here because it's simple yet effective. Weight-loss programs, heart-health centers, HMOs, walking clubs--all kinds of groups have adopted it. When the American College of Sports Medicine endorsed the program about a year ago, pedometer sales soared.

The program's goal is just what it says: walk 10,000 steps per day (about 5 miles). While that may sound like a lot, it turns out that even die-hard couch potatoes log about 2,000 to 4,000 steps a day--about 1 to 2 miles--just doing the minimum basic daily activities. And a typical busy woman may do 5,000 to 6,000 steps a day. But to reach 10,000, you still need another 4,000 steps or so (about 30 minutes) of walking. How do you get there?

Exercise specialists say there are many ways to reach or exceed the target. Some are familiar, but as more and more people have started doing "10,000 a Day," they've gotten very inventive about ways to add steps. What they suggest:

* Take the furthest parking space.

* Take the stairs.