Posted on 05/30/2019 6:49:17 AM PDT by BenLurkin
There's nothing magical about the number 10,000.
In fact, the idea of walking at least 10,000 steps a day for health goes back decades to a marketing campaign launched in Japan to promote a pedometer. And, in subsequent years, it was adopted in the U.S. as a goal to promote good health. It's often the default setting on fitness trackers, but what's it really based on?
"The original basis of the number was not scientifically determined," says researcher I-Min Lee of Brigham and Women's Hospital.
She was curious to know how many steps you need to take a day to maintain good health and live a long life, so she and her colleagues designed a study that included about 17,000 older women. Their average age was 72. The women all agreed to clip on wearable devices to track their steps as they went about their day-to-day activities.
It turns out that women who took about 4,000 steps per day got a boost in longevity, compared with women who took fewer steps. "It was sort of surprising," Lee says.
In fact, women who took 4,400 steps per day, on average, were about 40 percent less likely to die during the follow-up period of about four years compared with women who took 2,700 steps. The findings were published Wednesday in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Another surprise: The benefits of walking maxed out at about 7,500 steps. In other words, women who walked more than 7,500 steps per day saw no additional boost in longevity.
"I love this study. I think it's really good news for women who may not be particularly active," says Kathleen Janz, who studies how physical activity influences health at the University of Iowa. She was not involved in this study.
Janz, who helped shape the new federal exercise recommendations released last November, says the message that comes from this study is that older women can benefit from just light walking.
"They didn't need to go the gym or invest in a personal trainer or exercise equipment," she says. All they had to do was walk.
And Janz says that's encouraging.
"To me, this study suggests there's more benefit to light activity than we were previously thinking there might be," she says.
Of course, the researchers point out, they would like to know much more about how walking may affect other health parameters such as quality of life and memory and cognitive function. It's possible that walking a greater number of steps each day could influence these outcomes.
Another thing Janz notes is that this study only measures walking. It didn't measure things that many of us do that don't require steps, things like gardening, swimming or biking. And it's safe to assume some women in the study were doing these other things that can influence health as well.
And Janz says to remember the federal exercise guidelines call for 150 minutes per week of moderate physical activity, which includes all kinds of daily movement, not just steps.
So, if 10,000 steps has been feeling out of reach to you, it may be time reset those factory settings on your fitness tracker. Instead, try to hit at least 4,400 a day, along with daily activities that you enjoy. And stick to it.
I am shocked.
It’s similar to the “drink 8 glasses of water a day”. I never once heard that phrase in Med School but every layman seems to “know” it.
I worked in the telecom business. There is a measure called service level. It has been a standard for decades. Billions of telephone calls have been measured against it.
How did it come about?
The engineers who installed the first system had to enter a default. So they stuck in a variation of the Pareto ratio. And for about the past forty years, the staffing of call centers have been calculated to a standard not based on any reality. And it hasn’t changed much to this day.
Roughly 3.5 miles . . . depending on the length of your stride.
For those that stepped off the edge of the Grand Canyon, they took one too many.
That’s a lot of trips from the LazyBoy to the kitchen....
This is such a flawed study. If you are already in poor health you aren’t walking 4000 steps no matter what. What the study shows is people who are in good health are going to live longer.
Minimum of 6,500 steps a day keeps my rhm at 50-55 bpm.
Who needs 10 extra years in a ‘facility’?
“They didn’t need to go the gym or invest in a personal trainer or exercise equipment,” she says. All they had to do was walk.”
Nor will most of them not need knee or hip replacements due to running on the streets.
One of my younger female siblings cracked this code decades ago after her youngest child was born.
She started walking 2-3 miles, 5 days per week. She, also, gets up every hour during the day, for about 5 minutes of standing/walking instead of sitting for hours at a time.
She is in her mid 70’s and weighs the same as she did at age 18.
Her walking gear: good walking shoes and sweats or jeans and a T or sweatshirt. She gets a new pair of walking shoes every year on her birthday. She buys a pack of all cotton socks at Costco about every 3 months.
Her lab values, ekg’s and bp measurements look like those of a young female athlete.
She, like us, lives on the Mediterranean Diet with zero processed foods and artificial flavorings. Carbs are minimal in her diet.
She loves dogs and is on their 5th dog. Those dogs walked with her every day.
We have a neighbor, who is the same age and looks like a 20/30 year old. She is on her 3rd walking dog. They walk every day up and down the hills for 3-4 miles. Her mother recently died at age 96 and was a walker.
I’m doing almost two miles a day, seven days a week. I don’t know how many steps that is. Two of my sisters have passed away, both my parents are gone from heart failure and my two brothers have had heart surgery and at least one has had a heart attack.
I guess I’ll know soon if it’s working.
Bathroom trips make up the difference.
Why, Ward Cleaver used to walk 20 miles per day!
“It turns out that women who took about 4,000 steps per day got a boost in longevity, compared with women who took fewer steps. “It was sort of surprising,” Lee says.”
Did they adjust for other factors, such as diet, genetics, initial health condition, etc.?
Seriously, I have a daughter and family in Tokyo, where an AVERAGE person there walks two miles per day just to get from home to work. Half mile average from the flat to the nearest station; another half mile from the destination station to the office. Multiply by two and an easy two miles per day minimum x five days a week.
That's why you don't see many fat Japanese unless you go over to the Ryogoku neighborhood (where the Sumo Tournaments are held).
Thanks for posting. This is one of those examples where statistics tell us one thing but the results can vary widely. And in this case, it’s because the increase in heart rate is what likely causes the benefit not the steps themselves.
Many decades ago I was a very successful nationally ranked endurance athlete. In the early 1980s heart rate monitors which were battery powered and could be used to monitor and record your training performance became available and were an amazing development.
For maximum training benefit it is best to keep your heart rate above a certain level that varies from individual to individual but also depends on your fitness level and other factors. It is not surprising to me at all that no statistical benefit was found for women who walked more than a certain ammount, but I would not make the same assumptions as to why, as some here do.
If someone is walking at a place that raises their resting heart rate from 60 up to 90 while walking... there may be no training benefit at all other than it is better not to be sitting all day. When I was training for endurance events I typically preferred to keep my heart rate above 70% of my maximum heart rate for an extended period of time. Walking would have had no benefit to my training regimen at that time. Now that I am a fat old man, walking has some benefit to me. how much depends a great deal on ones fitness level and age.
Bet it was uphill both ways :)
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