How many steps do you need to take daily to stay healthy?
A “meta-study”, including12 other studies, recently shed light on this question, and came up with definitive answers.
Data from more than 110,100 individuals who wore accelerometers (or fitness trackers), were taken by researchers, and found clinically important results which could have key implications to public health, going forward.
From as little as 2,500 daily steps
It turns out, the magic number isn’t 10,000 steps as previously believed; rather, health benefits start with as few as around 2,500 daily steps.
The meta-study, titled “Relationship of Daily Step Counts to All-Cause Mortality and Cardiovascular Events”, was published in the high-impact Journal of American Cardiology, on October 10, 2023, and is classified as an “original investigation”.
The researchers include Dr. Thijs M.H. Eijsvogels of the Department of Medical BioSciences, Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands and Dr. Paul D. Thompson, of the Division of Cardiology, Hartford Hospital, Hartford, Connecticut, USA.
Reduction in mortality
The study revealed that for the best reduction in all-cause mortality and cardiovascular risk, aim for around 9,000 and 7,000 steps daily, respectively.
Over the past few years, researchers have been trying to determine the ideal number of steps for health benefits. This new meta-analysis may provide the most definitive answer yet.
Where benefits of daily walks start to show
The study suggests that health benefits begin at between 2,500 and 2,700 steps a day.
For the strongest defense against cardiovascular disease, aim for around 7,000 daily steps (precisely 7,126), and for the greatest reduction in the risk of mortality – aim for about 9,000 steps each day (8,763 steps).
Up to 60% reduction of all-cause death
The risk of all-cause death was reduced by 8 per cent with 2,500 steps, and cardiovascular events were reduced by 11 per cent with 2,700 steps.
At 9,000 steps a day, the chance of dying early is reduced by 60 per cent, while walking 7,000 steps lowers the chances of cardiovascular disease by 51 per cent.
Apparently it has no scientific basis; rather, it originated in a 1964 advertisement for a pedometer (an instrument for estimating the distance travelled on foot by recording the number of steps taken).
Walking speed
The meta-study included health records for 111,309 individuals who wore accelerometers, or fitness trackers.
The study also found that additional health benefits are associated with intermediate and high walking speeds, in addition to step counts.
Quantity
“This is the first study to objectively quantify the minimal and optimal stepping volume for health outcomes,” said senior investigator Dr. Thijs M.H. Eijsvogels.
“We also found that these step targets were independent of sex, device type, or wearable location, reinforcing the robustness of our findings and the possibility to add these step targets to future physical activity guidelines.”
Move more, sit less
Dr. Amanda Paluch, assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts and member of the Steps for Health Collaborative, who was not involved in the study, told Medical News Today: “This study reiterates what we have seen in our previous work. Move more and sit less. It is not an all-or-nothing situation.”
Dr. Cheng-Han Chen, cardiologist and medical director of the Structural Heart Program at Saddleback Medical Center, who was also not involved in the study, was pleased that the study “gives us lots of (step) targets.”
Benefits of walking: Lodz and Johns Hopkins study
Researchers from the Medical University of Lodz in Poland and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the US foundin another study that the health benefits of walking extended to all age groups, irrespective of their place of residence.
Their analysis of more than 226,000 people around the world showed 4,000 was enough to start reducing the risk of dying prematurely of any cause.
The under-60 age group benefited the most.
Prof Maciej Banach, from the Lodz university, said that while the number of advanced drugs for treatment was growing, they were not the only answer.
Harvard study
I-Min Lee, an expert on step counts and health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, echoed this in an earlier study, i.e. taking even fewer steps than the 10,000-steps-a-day target set by some fitness tracker – can still have health benefits.
In 2019, a study led by Lee, a professor in the Harvard Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology, found that women in their 70s who reached 4,400 steps a day reduced their risk of premature death by about 40 per cent, compared to women who took 2,700 or fewer steps per day.
The risk of early death continued to drop among the women who walked more than 5,000 steps per day, but the benefits plateaued at roughly 7,500 daily steps.
