- A major new study examines the health effects of walking 10,000 steps a day or fewer.
- The researchers found that the risk of premature death decreases with every 2,000 steps you take.
- They also found an association between the number of daily steps you take and a reduced risk of developing dementia, heart disease and cancer.
- Power walking also has additional benefits and can make fewer steps count significantly more.
To maintain health, experts usually recommend walking 10,000 steps every day. For some, daily routine and other factors make it difficult to achieve this goal. A new, large observational study finds that walking fewer steps also has health benefits, and that pace also influences walking’s effects on well-being.
“10,000 steps per day is a popular goal that has been around for several decades,” said Prof Emmanuel Stamatakis, senior study author and professor at the University of Sydney Medical news today. “However, to date there has been very little empirical evidence supporting its specific health benefits.”
The study found that for every 2,000 steps taken, a person reduces their risk of dying from all causes by 8% to 11%.
Professor Paul Arciero of the Department of Human Physiological Sciences at Skidmore College, who was not involved in the study, said MNT that the study’s most intriguing conclusion “was how beneficial it is to increase daily step count, regardless of the number of steps taken toward the known goal of 10,000.”
“In other words, just increase the number of steps past a minimum starting point, say 1,000 steps [per] day is beneficial. This is very encouraging and motivating news for the least active individuals,” he said.
The study was published in
“Increasing the pace of walking can be just as important as the total number of steps people take,” Prof Stamatakis pointed out.
The study found that power walking offered an additional risk reduction for the same health conditions that walking prevents.
“People who can’t fit 10,000 steps into their daily routine could try 1-2 minute bursts at very fast or maximum pace during a normal walk from point A to point B. Such bouts, repeated a few times a day, could potentially improve fitness and reduce the risk of the long-term health effects we looked at in our study.”
— Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis
“This is great news for those pressed for time,” said Prof Arciero.
The study confirmed that for optimal health benefits, “the optimal point is at or very close to 10,000 steps,” Prof. Stamatakis said.
“In general, the more steps per day the better, and long-term benefits start at relatively low levels, e.g. B. about 4,000 steps a day.”
The authors found that while 9,800 steps a day can reduce dementia by 50%, just 3,800 steps a day can reduce the risk of dementia by 25%.
In addition, the effects of walking are not age-dependent, said co-lead author Professor Borja del Pozo Cruz from the University of Southern Denmark and senior researcher at the University of Cadiz Medical news today:
“In order to check this precisely, we carried out a moderation analysis. However, age did not appear as an effect modifier in our study. Other studies have shown different outcomes for younger and older adults, with younger adults needing to take more steps to maximize the benefits associated with steps.”
The study authors analyzed UK Biobank data from 78,500 people who wore a fitness tracker 24/7 for 7 days. Their average age was 61 years.
“This was the largest population study,” Prof. Arciero noted, “showing more steps [per] Day—up to 10,000—was associated with a reduced risk of certain cancers, heart disease, and mortality in women and men with a median age of 60 years through a follow-up of seven years.”
“This study provides compelling new data supporting increased steps with no minimum threshold for benefits to occur.”
– Professor Paul Arciero
Because this is an observational study, it is beyond the scope to clearly identify causal relationships, as Prof. del Pozo Cruz explained:
“This is a limitation shared by many epidemiological studies. However, based on our hypothesis, previous research linking physical activity to health outcomes, and our causal inference approach, we can make fairly strong hypotheses that steps are associated with health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease and cancer.”
“We took several actions to minimize the possibility that, for example, the strong associations we found are due to less healthy people being both at higher risk of dying prematurely and less well because of their impaired health.” be able to walk,” added Prof. Stamatakis. “These actions included excluding participants with severe disease at baseline and removing from our analyzes participants who had an event in the first two years of follow-up.”
Prof Arciero agreed, saying the study was “convincing evidence that you are taking more steps [per]Tag is an effective lifestyle strategy to improve our health at every level.”
“These types of large-scale, well-controlled prospective observational studies shed light on relationships and associations to inform public health policy and future RCTs [randomize controlled trials] to identify specific lifestyle strategies with the greatest health impact,” he added.
Prof del Pozo Cruz proposed “an RCT testing whether the 10,000-step goal is associated with long-term cardiovascular and cancer risk reduction.”
“Another useful research would be to find out if Steps is a viable goal in public health interventions. For example, would older adults be better off accepting a recommendation based on steps than on general physical activity?” he said.
“A possible starting point,” said Prof. Arciero, “is to conduct randomized controlled trials in individuals with increased risk factors and/or early onset disease for each of these disease states.”
He suggested: “directed steps [per] Day over both shorter and longer intervention periods, while food intake and other lifestyle factors are closely monitored/controlled to assess the effectiveness of the steps [per]Risk Reduction Day.”
“Ideally,” said Prof. Stamatakis, “the next step in this research direction would be large randomized controlled trials in previously sedentary subjects assigned different ‘doses’ of daily walking.”
“Such studies – which ideally would last for years – should provide simple and workable motives to support, empower and motivate people to adhere to the prescribed walking dose,” he added.
Prof Stamatakis said such expensive research is unlikely for the time being: “Hence, large, well-designed observational studies using 24-hour trackers are the best available evidence to support daily stepping recommendations.”
Prof del Pozo Cruz described tracking your step count and pace without a fitness tracker as “probably difficult and inaccurate.”
“[People] can do something simple that adds some intensity to his steps. They may walk at a pace that makes speaking difficult. Or they can measure distances and cover them in less time.”
— Professor Borja del Pozo Cruz
In any case, he added: “It’s not common for fitness trackers to track steps [per minute]. Devices with GPS can provide such metrics, but usually give miles per kilometer [minute] or [kilometers] per hour or even distance per unit time. With the evidence generated in our study, we hope more and more steps/minute metrics will be incorporated into fitness trackers.”
Prof. del Pozo Cruz concluded that it is “important to emphasize the idea that every step counts and that the benefits of walking begin with the very first step”.
“We have provided tangible and practical recommendations that we hope will give people and healthcare professionals tools to promote healthier lifestyles. Hiking is free! And our studies also show that you can achieve a lot with it,” he added.
#Steps #Power #Walking #Equally #Beneficial
Leave a Comment