charting retirement

Your normal walking speed can be a practical and useful indicator of your overall health, especially as you approach retirement . According to a blog post in McMaster University’s Optimal Aging Portal , it can also provide clues to your life expectancy.

As the chart shows, walking speed tends to drop as we age. If your normal walking speed at least matches the numbers in the chart, you should have a fair chance of reaching your expected lifespan, if not exceeding it.

Julie Richardson, the author of the McMaster Optimal Aging Portal blog post, says the converse is also true: If we work to improve our walking speed, we might extend our life expectancy. This belief is based on a 2007 paper, “Improvement in usual gait speeds predicts better survival in older adults.”

See Full Page