Walking is the sixth vital sign. Here’s what that means for you.

There’s a sentence in a recent National Geographic piece on walking that stopped me mid-scroll:

“For reasons we don’t understand, the speed you walk is related to your risk of dying. Folks who can keep up the pace are likely to stick around longer.” — Peggy Cawthon, Science Director, California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute (via National Geographic)

Science doesn’t always need a clean explanation. Sometimes it just needs to change how you move today.

The full article — Walking is the sixth vital sign. Here’s how to do it right. — is one of the clearest, most practically useful pieces of walking science I’ve read. It’s behind a paywall, so here’s what I took away from it — and why it matters if you’re using TrailQuest.

What is the “sixth vital sign”?

Doctors already track five vital signs: heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, respiratory rate, and oxygen saturation. In recent years, gait speed — how fast you walk — has been proposed as a sixth. The reason is blunt: it predicts a wide array of health outcomes with surprising accuracy.

According to physical therapy professor Jessie VanSwearingen at the University of Pittsburgh, walking “engages every system within the body.” When something starts going wrong — cardiovascular, neurological, musculoskeletal — your walking pattern often changes before a formal diagnosis arrives. A doctor paying attention to how you move across the room may catch something earlier than a blood test would.

The National Institute on Aging identifies reduced mobility as one of the primary drivers of lost independence in older adults — and it’s also closely linked to cognitive decline.

The uncomfortable truth about “just keep moving”

Every expert in the piece agrees on one thing: the worst thing you can do is stop. The effects of inactivity arrive almost immediately. Hours of sitting are enough to make the body feel it.

But the article pushes past the generic advice. Simply “walking more” isn’t enough if your technique is deteriorating. VanSwearingen compares it to tennis: if your backhand is broken, just playing more tennis won’t fix it. You need to work on the mechanics.

Her research group at Pittsburgh developed a 12-week programme called On the Move that focuses not on strength and endurance — the usual targets — but on timing and coordination. Small adjustments in how you initiate a step, shift your weight, and push off the ground add up to meaningful gains in efficiency. More efficient walking means you can do more with the same body.

Three things the research actually says to do

• Walk from your feet, not your head. Push off the ground rather than thinking about lifting and placing your foot. Look forward, not down — the brain moves in the direction you’re looking.
• Vary your pace deliberately. Occasionally bump your walking speed up by 10% for a minute. This trains adaptability, not just endurance.
• Don’t wait for a problem. Cawthon is direct: “The optimal time to begin is now. The next best time is tomorrow.” Mobility habits built in your 20s and 30s are the ones that protect you in your 60s and 70s.

Why this lands differently when you’re walking a trail

One of the things I wanted TrailQuest to do from the start was make the abstract concrete. “Walk more” is good advice that nobody follows because there’s no direction to it. Walking 780 km of the Camino de Santiago — even virtually, one commute at a time — gives you a direction. A destination. Something that makes today’s steps feel like they belong to a bigger story.

The HealthSpan Score in TrailQuest was built on exactly the kind of evidence this article describes: that it’s not just volume that matters, but consistency and pace over time. Your score reflects all three. That’s not an accident.