Your Daily Steps Hold a Life-or-Death Secret

Written by Sayer Ji on September 15, 2025. Posted in Current News

For almost two decades, I’ve been immersed in documenting the therapeutic potential of lifestyle practices

Through GreenMedInfo, I’ve curated over 1,000 peer-reviewed studies on exercise alone, spanning 280 distinct health conditions ranging from depression and dementia to diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis.¹

The consistent message from this body of evidence is that exercise is medicine in the truest sense.

Unlike pharmaceuticals, which typically act on one pathway at a time, exercise orchestrates a symphony of benefits across multiple systems simultaneously: lowering inflammation, improving vascular health, balancing hormones, supporting brain function, enhancing immunity, and so much more.

But while I knew exercise was a keystone for health, one mystery lingered. Why does walking—the most basic, natural, and low-intensity form of exercise—deliver such profound and wide-ranging effects? Why would simply accumulating steps rival high-intensity training or sophisticated interventions in protecting against chronic disease and premature death?

I did not have a satisfying answer—until now.

A Landmark Study and Its Simple Message

On August 4, 2025, epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher, MPH, published a clear summary of a landmark Lancet Public Health meta-analysis:

Walking around 7,000 steps per day cuts the risk of dying from any cause by nearly half. It also significantly lowers the risks of cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, diabetes, and cancer mortality.

This study pooled data from nearly a million participants across 24 cohorts worldwide—the most comprehensive analysis of step counts and health outcomes to date. The numbers were staggering:

• 47 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality at ~7,000 steps/day compared with 2,000
• 25 percent lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease
• 47 percent lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease
• 37 percent lower risk of cancer death
• 14 percent lower risk of type 2 diabetes
• 38 percent lower risk of dementia
• 22 percent lower risk of depression
• 28 percent lower risk of falls

The benefits started with as little as 3,000–4,000 steps and grew progressively stronger, plateauing around 7,000 for some outcomes but continuing toward 10,000 for others.

It was exactly the kind of validation public health officials have long sought: a clear, evidence-based threshold that people can understand and act upon.

But for me, it did more than affirm the importance of walking. It supports my ongoing thesis that the primary reason walking is so potent lies in a little-known physiological marvel—the soleus muscle, the “second heart you never knew you had.”

The Soleus: Anatomy’s Hidden Masterpiece

Nestled beneath the gastrocnemius in the calf, the soleus makes up only about one percent of body mass. Yet its design is extraordinary. Composed of up to 87 percent slow-twitch fibers, wrapped in dense capillary networks, and connected to venous reservoirs in the legs, the soleus can contract tirelessly for hours without fatigue.

When it contracts—every time we walk, stand, or even fidget our feet—the soleus generates intramuscular pressures exceeding 200 mmHg, greater than systolic blood pressure. This force propels blood upward against gravity, displacing 40–60 mL with each contraction and increasing venous return by as much as 300 percent during walking.

Physiologists call this the skeletal muscle pump. I call it the peripheral heart. Our ancestors walked exponentially more than our sedentary modern lives allow, and I believe this dramatic reduction in soleus activation lies at the root of our declining health across virtually every metric.

The emerging research powerfully supports this connection—what we’ve lost in movement, we’ve paid for in wellness.

Why This Matters for Health

When the soleus is active, it:

1. Supports circulation: Offloads the thoracic heart, stabilizes central blood pressure, and ensures steady cerebral perfusion.
2. Burns fuel continuously: Prefers glucose and fat directly from the blood, sparing glycogen, and thus lowers blood sugar and lipids without exhausting the body.
3. Prevents pooling and falls: Keeps blood moving in older adults, reducing dizziness, fainting, and fall risk.
4. Protects the brain: Sustains oxygen delivery, buffering against vascular dementia and cognitive decline.

In fact, a Mayo Clinic study of over 2,700 patients found that those with impaired calf pump function had nearly four times higher mortality risk than those with normal function.

Suddenly, the Lancet findings made sense. Walking isn’t therapeutic simply because of “movement” or “cardio.” Walking is therapeutic because it reactivates the second heart in our calves—a system modern sedentary lifestyles have left dormant.

The Metabolic Furnace Few Recognize

In 2022, researchers at the University of Houston introduced the world to the “soleus push-up” (SPU), a seated exercise isolating the soleus. Participants demonstrated:

• 52 percent reduction in post-meal glucose spikes
• 60 percent reduction in insulin requirements
• Hours-long increases in fat oxidation
• Minimal glycogen depletion

This shattered conventional wisdom. For decades, experts insisted that meaningful metabolic benefits required whole-body workouts or high-intensity training. The SPU proved otherwise: the soleus alone, if properly engaged, can function as a daylong metabolic clearance organ.

This discovery dovetails beautifully with the Lancet analysis: the thousands of daily soleus contractions generated by walking form the hidden physiological basis for exercise’s broad-spectrum healing power.

Walking as Daily Medicine

Let’s revisit the Lancet outcomes through the lens of the soleus:

• All-cause mortality (↓47 percent): Reduced systemic strain, improved circulation, and enhanced metabolic clearance.
• Cardiovascular disease (↓25–47 percent): Lower cardiac workload, better vascular compliance, stabilized blood pressure.
• Cancer mortality (↓37 percent): Reduced insulin resistance, lower chronic inflammation, improved lipid profiles.
• Diabetes incidence (↓14 percent): Soleus-driven glucose uptake bypasses insulin signaling, supporting metabolic health even in resistant states.
• Dementia (↓38 percent): Continuous cerebral perfusion, reduced hypoperfusion episodes, neurovascular protection.
• Depression (↓22 percent): Improved blood flow, metabolic flexibility, and likely neuromodulatory myokines released during soleus activity.
• Falls (↓28 percent): Better postural blood pressure control, stronger lower limb circulation, reduced dizziness.

Walking’s magic, in other words, isn’t abstract. It’s mechanistic, specific, and embodied in a single, forgotten muscle.

The Broader Context: Sedentary Life and the Silent Epidemic

Modern lifestyles have engineered the soleus out of daily use. Office work, cars, and long periods of sitting leave this “second heart” in hibernation. The result? Rising epidemics of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, and depression.

We’ve been told that “sitting is the new smoking.” But perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the problem is not sitting per se—it’s that while we sit, the soleus goes to sleep. And with it, our most efficient metabolic stabilizer is turned off.

Reclaiming the Second Heart

The solution is as simple as it is profound: reactivate the soleus. Walking 7,000 steps a day is one obvious way. But even for those confined to desks or beds, techniques like the soleus push-up provide an accessible alternative:

1. Sit with feet flat, knees at 90 degrees.
2. Keep the ball of the foot on the ground.
3. Lift heels maximally, then lower with control.
4. Repeat continuously at a steady rhythm.

No gym. No sweat. No equipment. Just reawakening what evolution (or interchangeably, the creator’s intelligent design) built into us. You can also watch the video below to learn 3 more soleus exercises with weight, if you want to take it to the next level.

A Paradigm Shift in Exercise Science

For years, exercise science has been dominated by prescriptions based on duration (150 minutes per week of moderate activity) or intensity (vigorous exercise for cardiovascular fitness). These metrics remain important. But the soleus invites a paradigm shift:

• Frequency matters most. Continuous, low-level activation trumps occasional intensity.
• Metabolism is local. A single muscle can regulate whole-body glucose and lipid balance.
• Circulation is distributed. The heart is not alone; the body is designed with peripheral pumps.

This recognition could transform rehabilitation, occupational health, and chronic disease prevention.

Looking back at the GreenMedInfo database exercise, I now see a unifying thread. All those hundreds of studies showing exercise’s benefits may have been observing, in part, the downstream effects of soleus activation.

In other words: the soleus is not an accessory player but a primary driver of why walking and low-level movement are so therapeutic.

It is the hidden link between exercise and longevity, metabolism and mood, circulation and cognition.

See more here substack.com

Header image: Tom’s Guide

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