You’ve probably heard that you should take 10,000 steps a day. You may have also heard about the amazing health benefits that come with the steps, or at least that there are? Yes, you get a lot of benefits from walking and it’s not worth reducing, but is 10,000 steps a day some sort of magical limit to immortality, or is it just an old-fashioned market gimmick? Is it worth walking?
10,000 steps a day has its roots in an ancient (1960, okay not ancient, but I'll color the story for you a bit) Japanese pedometer, whose nickname “manpo-kei” means “ten thousand steps meter” in Finnish (raw translation, I don’t speak Japanese). The maximum spike for determining the number of steps rises to the surface at the same time as this device. So the question is whether we are just victims of a larger marketing gimmick or whether we should continue to be well remembered with ten tons and Riitta Väisänen.
What is enough and what you should aim for?
At least 10,000 steps is not a bad goal. However, the health benefits are reasonably significant. For example, I-Min Lee and Julie E. Buring, who studied the effect of number of steps and intensity on mortality, found a clear reference to the association of higher number of steps with lower mortality. Those who took about 4,400 steps a day had a lower mortality rate than those who took about 2,700 steps a day, and 7,500 steps a day reduced it even more! The study involved 16,741 women with an average age of about 72 years.
Individuals at high risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes may also reduce their own risk of such events by increasing their stride rate. Those who increased their number of steps on a daily basis by about 2,000 steps also had a 10% lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease than diabetes. (Yates. T., Haffner. S. 2013.)
The efficiency from each step clearly begins to decline after that 7,500 steps, but yes, we are still moving in a positive direction. If there are 7,500 steps in a day, then at least at ten o'clock in the evening you don't have to go crunching the missing 2,500 steps. Even less walking is enough!
So how much walking is enough?
Riitta Väisänen and ten tons are allowed to remain gilded in our memories, but the starting point would be just enough for 7,500 steps. Especially if some of them have been taken in the context of an active continuous “loop”. You can aim for 10,000 steps and if that number of steps is already full then you will start to reduce it in vain, more power to you! If the number of steps per day is less than 7,500, then a steady increase in the number of steps can probably make you feel better about everyday life, such as coping.
If the steps are to be taken well, then adding them will hardly take your health to the “next level,” but those steps could even be directed to the gym to improve muscle fitness. However, walking alone does not maintain muscle strength as well as training with weights. How much of these should be combined? The best way to get started is through coaching with a professional.
Sources Includes
Lee, I., Shiroma, EJ, Kamada, M., Bassett, DR, Matthews, CE & Buring, JE 2019. Association of Step Volume and Intensity With All-Cause Mortality in Older Women. JAMA internal medicine, 179 (8), page 1105. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6547157/
TUDOR-LOCKE, C., HATANO, Y., PANGRAZI, RP & KANG, M. (2008). Revisiting How Many Steps Are Enough? Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 40 (7), S537-S543. https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0b013e31817c7133
Yates, T., Haffner, SM, MD, Schulte, PJ, Thomas, L., Huffman, KM, MD, Bales, CW,. . . Kraus, WE, MD. 2014. Association between change in daily ambulatory activity and cardiovascular events in people with impaired glucose Tolerance (NAVIGATOR trial): A cohort analysis. The Lancet (British edition), 383 (9922), p. 1059-1066. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24361242/