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You don’t need to do 10,000 steps per day to live longer, report finds
If youve found yourself a slave to your step count, this news is for you. An expansive study of daily step counts and their effect on overall health and risk of serious illness has found the threshold we could be aiming for is far below the popular 10,000 mark.
The researchers also found that, past a certain point, doing more steps doesnt seem to have a particularly positive effect on our risk of mortality or cardiovascular disease (CVD). Whether or not you can get your daily steps in within 11 minutes, and even if your dental situation puts you at greater risk of CVD, it pays to know what sort of distances we should be covering daily to maximize our chances of a long and healthy life. Aiming for 10,000 can be demotivating. Better to feel like you’re on track with 3,000 per day than to routinely feel like a failure.
Study finds significant mortality and cardiovascular disease benefits after 2,500-3,000 steps
If you love to tot up your daily step counts and track your progress over a week, a month, or even a year using your smartphone or smartwatch, youre not alone. Nor would you be the only one with the magical figure of 10,000 steps hovering before your minds eye.
Well, a new study gives the lie to the popular wisdom that 10,000 is the optimum daily step count.
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Working with data from a whopping 111,000 individuals across 12 separate studies, a consortium of researchers across the world concluded, remarkably, that as few as 2,600 steps per day yield significant mortality benefits. That means it reduces your risk of death from all causes.
Meanwhile, walking 2,800 steps per day gives significant benefits regarding cardiovascular disease or CVD.
After reaching the golden step counts of 2,600 and 2,800, doing more steps results in non-linear risk reductions of all-cause mortality and incident CVD. That means as you do more steps, you lower your risk of death and CVD, but in a non-linear way, i.e., the amount of good each step does gets smaller and smaller.
The optimal dose of steps per day is between 7,000 and 9,000
According to the paper, which the Journal of the American College of Cardiology published last year, the benefits regarding a persons risk of mortality continue up to about 8,800 steps.
The same goes for CVD, up to about 7,200 steps.
Beyond these numbers, the research suggests there isnt a measurable benefit to mortality or CVD risk. However, that doesnt mean there arent benefits in other areas.
To maximize the gain you get from each step, the paper recommends maintaining a moderate to high step cadence. Thats the number of steps per minute.
In other words, a faster-paced walk benefits your heart and overall health more than a slow-paced walk. This is because it increases your heart rate, improves your cardiovascular fitness, and burns more calories.
That doesnt mean slow walking isnt worth doing. Some people arent able to walk quickly or to walk quickly over a long period. Start somewhere. Walking is a great, relatively low-effort way to get the body moving and improve mood.
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