How Many Steps You Really Need to Take Each Day, According to Science?

The more you walk, the lower all-cause mortality and cancer mortality. According to new research, the benefits plateau when you reach 10,000 steps per day. Obviously, that’s the number of steps you’re aiming for.

Studies comparing health outcomes to step count seem very convincing. We all have pedometers on our wrists. Meour pocket. The step count also sounds very specific and accurate. 10,000 Steps equal health and well-being and are measured automatically. cool.

But you must have already noticed some important caveats. Our bodies are messy meat machines, not clean pedometers. If exercise is important, wouldn’t cyclists take fewer steps than runners and be just as healthy? Wouldn’t you end up with a similar number of steps even though you exercised at different intensities?

On the other hand, there are some ways that step count is a good way to track activity, so I don’t want to dismiss the idea entirely. I Skeptical about the sharpness of the image it providesPeople who move around in their daily lives (“incidental” activities, as they are sometimes called) have higher step counts, even if they do not do much structured exercise. Automatically count steps: YYou may not remember whether you spent 20 or 45 minutes doing yard work, but your tracker probably knows exactly how many steps you took.

There is also a set of warnings: TThese studies are typically observational studies. They say people who walk more in a day tend to be healthier. But is it cause or effect? People in poor health may have less energy to run errands or go for daily walks. And people who use wheelchairs or other mobility aids probably don’t count their steps, even if they do.

With that in mind, here are some step counts published in recent research, alongside some of their caveats.

For all-cause mortality and cancer mortality

This study We found that people who took 10,000 steps were at less risk than those who took 8,000 steps, and those who took 6,000 steps. More than 10,000 steps seem to have similar risks as 10,000. In other words, if this represents true causality (which we have no proof of), increasing from 10,000 to 12,000 does not change the risk of cancer or death.

The 78,500 people tracked were from the UK, aged 40-79 years, and 97% Caucasian.

For dementia

This study Similar to the study above, participants’ risk of dementia was found to decrease by up to 9,800 steps per day. (This was also done by the same team and drawn from the same subject pool.) They also found that those who walked 3,800 steps had about half the risk compared to those who walked 9,800. I am referring to If you are more sedentary now. That said, this was also an observational study, and most of the participants were younger at onset of dementia.

All-cause mortality in older women

This study Women who took 4,400 steps were found to have a lower risk of death from any cause compared to those who took 2,700 steps per day. It was higher up to about 7,500 steps, after which the likelihood of death seemed to plateau. The number of steps is obtained from the quartiles. The lowest 25% of people averaged about 2,700.

Participants were 16,741 women with a mean age of 72 years. women’s health researchIt started in the 1990s as a trial of aspirin and vitamins for the prevention of heart disease and cancer. Participants were 95% white and mostly nurses.

Middle-aged and elderly mortality

This study We compared mortality risk among middle-aged (ages 41–65) with steps taken per day. People who walked more than 7,000 steps a day had a 50% to 70% lower risk of death than those who walked less than 7,000 steps a day. This number was chosen as the cutoff. Estimates of the American College of Sports Medicine Take a 30-minute walk each day, plus a small amount of non-exercise activity.

The 2,110 participants, 57% female and 42% black, were followed for an average of approximately 11 years after the study.

arteriosclerosis

Hardened arteries are a component of cardiovascular disease. This systematic review found that increasing by 2,000 steps per day appeared to reduce atherosclerosis by about the same amount as starting a structured exercise program. The categories we compared in our analysis ranged from people who took less than 5,000 steps like her to people who took more than 10,000 steps for him. The author writes:

The results are from 20 previous studies. Most were cross-sectional (comparing groups of people based on how many steps they took), but some were randomized controlled trials or prospective studies.

Diabetes Risk in Latino Adults

This study They found that for every 1,000 steps added per day, the risk of diabetes was reduced by 2%. was 18% lower.

Study participants were 6,634 Hispanic and Latino adults, half of whom were women, with a mean age of 39 years.

For all-cause mortality, but at different ages

This study It is interesting to note that the results are divided by age group. Data from 15 studies show that increasing the number of steps to 6,000 to 8,000 steps in people over the age of 60 reduces mortality, but is equivalent to 8,000 to 10,000 steps in young adults.

What do you make out of all this?

I think it would be a mistake to take these topline results at face value. Can you reduce your risk of death by a certain percentage just by intentionally walking a few thousand extra steps per day? already Instead of asking groups of people to take more steps to see how their health changed, they walked different amounts.

However, the results suggest that step counts in healthier people tend toward the upper end of the typical range. , someone who walks, say, 8,000 steps tends to be in the lower-risk category than someone who walks, say, 2,000 steps. So if you’re currently pretty sedentary, taking more steps might be worth a try. Have It matches the number of this and that.

I think it would be interesting not to. definite I want to talk specifically about these studies, the optimal numbers that these studies identified. It doesn’t mean you have to get 10,000, because things happen differently than if you got 9,500.

The curves of the graphs in these papers tend to plateau somewhere in the top four digits, but not many people achieved more steps than this, so the estimates are uncertain there as well. For example, someone who regularly walks 25,000 steps a day is a completely different person. They may be very fit or have active jobs that require them to work harder than recover easily. These studies were not designed to reveal differences.

In short, it could be what you assumed even before you looked at the numbers. If you do a lot of sitting, more movement is probably good for you.If you want specific guidance you can use the good old 150+ minutes of exercise per week guidelines, or various Guidelines from government projects We recommend 8,500 steps per day (U.S. Presidential Challenge), 7,000 to 10,000 (British National Obesity Forum), or 8,000 to 10,000 (Japan).