What Walking 7000 Steps a Day Actually Does for Your Body

Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Dr. Eric Berg

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Research has shown that taking fewer than 2,000 steps daily increases disease rates. Anything over 4500 steps shows cardiovascular benefits, and taking more than 7000 steps daily significantly improves your health, including longevity.

Walking after a meal can help eliminate any extra sugar you consume. If you wake up with high blood glucose, a morning walk can help lower it and prevent it from being converted into fat.

Walking activates your muscles and can improve mood issues like depression. It lowers high blood pressure and can boost weight loss, especially visceral fat loss. Walking while fasting can significantly improve fasting benefits. Walking briskly and walking uphill enhances the benefits of walking.

A 2017 Japanese study found that 3 minutes of fast-paced walking followed by 3 minutes of regular walking significantly affected blood pressure levels and leg strength. Repeating this cycle 5 times was more beneficial than 1.5 to 2 hours of walking.

For more walking benefits, try backward walking! It strengthens the knees, ankles, and hips. Nasal breathing while walking can increase CO2, which makes oxygen more efficient in your blood.

Walking can reduce cortisol naturally, helping to relieve stress. Leave your phone and music at home, and focus on the sights, sounds, and smells during your walk.

Another way to increase the benefits of walking is with hypoxia training. To do this, inhale for 3 steps and exhale for 4 steps. You can also try holding your breath for 5 to 10 seconds, every few minutes. Hypoxia training can trigger genes that can strengthen your body, decrease inflammation, and improve recovery.

Avoid the following mistakes while walking:

•Leaning too far forward •Wearing uncomfortable shoes•Poor timing •Overtraining

Dr. Eric Berg DC Bio:Dr. Berg, age 60, is a chiropractor who specializes in Healthy Ketosis & Intermittent Fasting. He is the author of the best-selling book The Healthy Keto Plan and is the Director of Dr. Berg Nutritionals. He no longer practices, but focuses on health education through social media.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Walking is one of the most powerful medicines. It lengthens your life, decreasing anxiety and depression, reducing cortisol.
0:06.5	It's good for digestion, strengthen your immune system. If we just look at the research on steps,
0:11.8	anything below 2,000 steps, which is one mile, you actually start seeing the risk of diseases going up.
0:18.0	Then when you get up to about 4,500 steps, which is a little over two miles,
0:22.6	you start to see cardiovascular benefits. If you go a little more past 7,000 steps, you start seeing
0:28.3	a lot more benefits, including living longer. One of the things that will nullify the benefits of walking
0:33.3	is sitting too long. And then thinking that I can go ride my bike around the block, and that will be
0:38.4	enough to counter that. Unfortunately, it's not quite true. Let's first talk about the benefit of what
0:42.7	walking can do to your blood sugar. Walking after a meal really will help any extra sugar that you
0:47.8	ate. Of course, I know some people are going to go, wow, I can just eat more sugar and walk.
0:52.2	Well, I'm not trying to put out that message. Another thing in the
0:55.6	morning, when you wake up with high blood glucose, especially if they're a pre-diabetic or a diabetic,
1:00.9	walking can handle that too because you can go for a walk in the morning and burn off that excess
1:05.7	glucose, which would be a very, very good thing because we don't want the glucose converting
1:09.9	into fat.
1:12.8	Walking activates your muscles.
1:18.8	Significantly improves depression because it's a low stress activity where you get a lot of oxygen.
1:23.3	If we compare walking to drugs, let's take high blood pressure medication.
1:26.2	Guess what? Walking lowers your blood pressure.
1:45.5	As far as weight loss goes, yes, you're going to lose weight with walking, especially in the belly area, visceral fat. But when you exercise, you're going to be increasing muscle. And that weighs a little bit more than fat. Instead of focusing on weight loss, what I recommend you is just measure your waist at the level of the belly button. You should see a significant decrease in belly fat. If you walk during a fast, you can improve
1:52.0	your results greatly. This is why when you wake up the morning and you don't eat, you fast until
1:57.1	noon, you should walk in the morning. You'll get better benefits. Another tip with walking is if you
	...

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