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It has become a wellness mantra: take your step. Ideally, it’s 10,000 a day.
But how many steps do you really need to take to enjoy the health benefits? And what exactly does walking for your body do?
New research shows that the number of magic is around 7,000 steps each day. Reaching that mark is associated with a significantly lower risk of a wide range of health issues, including dementia, heart disease, depression, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.
This effect ranged from a 6% reduction in cancer risk to a 38% reduction in dementia. Thursday’s Lancet Public Health Journal.
Achieving 7,000 steps per day also translates to a 28% lower risk of fatal falls for older people.
The findings “discover the myth that 10,000 steps per day should be the target of optimal health,” said Dr. Daniel Bailey, a sedentary behavior and health reader at Brunel University in London, who was not involved in the study.
This finding is not surprising to those familiar with the benefits of walking on heart health. Active walking increases your heart rate, improves circulation, lowers blood pressure, and helps people lose weight.
However, according to an international team of researchers, the new analysis that explores how taking a step can reduce the risks of multiple health problems is the first.
The advantages of walking
Researchers tracked data from over 160,000 people in 31 studies for analysis.
They find that people with modest step counts (about 4,000 per day) have higher healthier outcomes than people who live highly sedentary lives, taking around 2,000 steps per day.
The more people walked, the better they were with conditions like heart disease. However, regarding other health outcomes, the benefits appeared to tapered after about 7,000 steps per day, the study found.
“The real-world impact is that people can get health benefits from a small increase in physical activity, such as adding 1,000 steps per day,” Bailey said.
There are some limitations to the report. In particular, results on cancer and dementia are less certain, as data only emerged from a small number of studies. Furthermore, some of the included studies did not fully consider other factors that could affect health outcomes, such as age and frailty.
Still, the researchers said the findings could be encouraging for less active people, given that 7,000 steps per day could be a more realistic goal than an informal goal of 10,000 steps.
Stephen Harridge, a professor of human and applied physiology at King’s College London, said that step numbers shed little light on the intensity of people’s physical activity, as they were not involved in the study.
Health experts recommend that adults get moderate exercise for at least 150 minutes. For example, we recommend 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week or 75 minutes of intense exercise per week.
But nevertheless, Harridge welcomed the findings.
“This study adds to the body of knowledge that physical activity is extremely important to health, and what encourages people to become more active is good for both physical and mental health,” Harridge said.
