If You Walk These Many Steps a Day, You Can Keep Depression at Bay

Feeling down? Put on your walking shoes! But what’s the secret? Walking releases a cocktail of mood-boosting chemicals like endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin—your brain’s natural feel-good squad. No perfect time to walk? Just move when you can—your brain (and heart) will thank you for every step!

According to a study, racking up more steps each day is linked to fewer depressive symptoms. In fact, adding just 1,000 extra steps daily can significantly reduce the risk of depression. To know how much truth it holds, we shot a few questions at Dr. Madhusudan Singh Solanki, Senior Psychiatrist and Head of the Department of Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences, Max Smart Super Speciality Hospital, Saket, New Delhi.

“It is a well-known fact that any sort of physical activity, including walking, releases certain neurochemicals in the body, like endorphins, which are natural painkillers and feel-good hormones, thus elevating your mood. Walking also releases dopamine, which is responsible for the positive feelings associated with any kind of reward and hence reduces depressive mood; another neurohormone, serotonin, is also released, which is known to reduce depression. Thus, all these changes brought about by walking result in fostering a sense of well-being and reducing depression,” he said.

“There is not yet a clear-cut benchmark for the number of steps one can do to have better mental health, but there is general consensus that anything between 7000 to 10000 steps per day, which is considered moderate physical activity, is protective and preventive for cardiovascular disorders and all-cause premature deaths, as well as for reducing depression and having better mental health, and more than 10000 steps per day have not been shown to confer any additional benefit as per the research so far,” Dr. Solanki said.

“There is no ideal timing to walk as per research, but it is ideal to walk whenever you can. I usually recommend taking five-minute breaks to walk and move every 45 minutes of sedentary work and walk whenever you get a chance, take stairs and walk to home from parking or metro, all these small changes can make you easily achieve 7-8 thousand steps per day,” he explains.

“As per the consensus so far, moderate physical activity is good for better mental and physical health, which translates to walking a minimum of 7000 steps to a maximum of 10k steps per day. But for elderly and ailing people, even minimal physical activity or walking, whatever steps they can, is considered beneficial, as something is better than nothing in this case,” Dr. Solanki says.

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