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.
Is there an inexpensive “step-counter” available for one
to use ..?
I'm 5'9" and walking at a brisk but easy pace and I've measured my stride several times at 40 steps over 100 feet. That's 30".
I hear you. I was very physical when I was young and regularly put down 6 to 10 miles running two or three times a week until after I retired at 57. I lifted heavy, paddled surf ski long distance, loved trail running and mountain biking. At age 50, I was 179 lbs, 10% body fat. My resting heart rate was right around 50.
But too many times “All the way Sir!” and too many miles on foot took their toll and my knees gave out at 62. At 65 my heart went into AFIB and stayed there. Doctor says “Oh yes. That’s very common in old endurance athletes.” At 70 I take long walks in the woods, CBD and Xarelto. I’m down 20 lbs to around 160, haven’t measured my body fat, but I still wear the same belt size I always have since High School and I can still bang out 50 pushups on demand. I just don’t “Drop!” (Or get up) as quickly as I once did.
Keep moving or die young.
I would not want to discourage this. But fitbits are not really that much more accurate than the monitors that are built into exercise equipment. They will however give you an accurate picture of your resting heart rate. But, any heart rate monitor that does not have a chest strap is just not going to have great sensitivity or accuracy other than when you and it are stationary. When you are in motion they give you a reading based on a lot of interpolation from poor quality data.
I have both a Samsung “sports phone” and a Samsung smartwatch that measure your heart rate and neither are very useful to me because of the way their sensors work. I tried a fitbit out and wasn't very impressed with it, but one has to give them credit and kudos for stirring up interest in heart rate monitoring devices. Even my sister-in-law wears one and she uses a walker and won't go up and down stairs.
Polar still seems to make the best monitors. Although they cost more, at this point I would consider one of their wrist based monitors rather than a Fitbit. I am surprised that the core premium feature set most important to endurance athletes which is recording accurate actual heart rate data during exercise at a specific time interval with an easy way to download the data has changed so little in the approximately 35 years since I purchased my first CIC Polar Heartwatch and a CIC Sportstrainer.
I have been working on two houses since I retired one to sell and one to move into. I have neglected my training completely and it has taken its toll on my health. I should be starting up again soon, but I should have stuck to some type of maintenance routine.
Respectfully disagree. I recently wore a Holter monitor for 48 hrs. I also wore my Fitbit HR the entire time. My cardiologist told me my resting hr was 126 and my Fitbit showed 125. I also wear an apple watch 4 and the HR were all very close. I actually switched cardiologists when my old one insisted that my Fitbit/Apple Watch was basically useless even though I told him that when I would have palpitations both devices indicated tachycardia. My new cardiologist recommends continued monitoring with my devices.
That’s interesting. Thanks!
This study focuses on women. What are the numbers for men?
When marching home from work (which takes 35 minutes), I invariably have my nose stuck in a book. Just finished L. Sprague DeKamp's biography of H.P. Lovecraft - am now on Sorrentino's "Stephen Crane: A Life of Fire."
I might encounter one person walking his dog in those 35 minutes, and I've been marching along that same path - through apple-tree orchards - for the last 19 years, so reading and walking at the same time is no problem.
Regards,
I had the original Polar with chest strap on watch. When it finally gave up the ghost it felt like I lost my best hunting dog and my workouts never seemed the same.
Yup, I’m not saying walking isn’t highly beneficial. But this study doen’t prove it one way or the other.
It was uphill both ways for M.C.Escher!
Respectfully disagree.
I do not think that we have any actual disagreements on this. And actually the person that I was responding to and I had no disagreements either. We are kind of talking about two different things. You may have had a similar misunderstanding with the cardiologist who said your "Fitbit/Apple Watch was basically useless".
From a cardiologist's perspective because of the type of sensors used, the type and quality of data collected from those devices would be mostly useless in a clinical setting as compared to specialized equipment. He probably didn't mean that they were completely useless.
Chest sensors with electrically conductive patches still send the best data to a monitoring device, especially if the subject is in motion. Devices not using chest sensors typically have to use interpolation schemes (guessing) to make up for bad or missing data when the sensor is bouncing around on your skin.
If you are mostly stationary and looking for an average heart rate over a period of time they will likely give you the same result regardless of the sensor being used and the interpolation method.
The devices that I own and used for monitoring my training efforts took heart rate measurements and stored the number usually at 5, 15, or 60 second intervals depending on how the device was set up. They also calculate the amount of time spent above and below or within programmed zones. Some also calculate and record recovery times during "interval training" where the person repeatedly varies the intensity of their workout.
Some of the newer devices actually can record and use data from the actual wave form of your EKG (same as ECG) but they are still limited by the type of sensor being used especially if the subject is in motion. The latest Apple Watch has a display that looks like it came from an EKG monitor with multiple sticky leads that my paramedic buddies had my crew stick all over our patients. But the Apple sensor is actually based on LED lights and light‑sensitive photodiodes... the same basic technology as the earlobe clamp that came with our 25 year old tread mill.
So obviously the quality of the data is very limited compared with an actual multi-lead EKG monitor. The devices sold these days using gimmickry that looks good in an ad but as I said in my initial post I am surprised that the actual functionality has not changed that much since Polar first introduced personal monitors in the early 1980s.
The first one that I purchased was the “sports trainer” which calculated your times above and below your target zone. It was a great watch. Then I purchased the “heart watch” which recorded your actual heart rate every 5 seconds for an hour and 20 minutes, every 15 seconds for 4 hours, or every minute for 24 hours. The computer interface plugged into a serial port, but it was so expensive that I manually entered the numbers into a spreadsheet until the interface went on clearance a couple years later.
Those watches were not waterproof so I wrapped them in clear plastic and put them on my handlebars when it was rainy out. The first thing that actually broke were snaps on the sensor that held it onto the chest straps, but fortunately just about any chest strap from any brand heart rate monitor was compatible at that time, so replacements were not expensive. The original watches still work, but I got watches later that had coded straps for when you are working out with others. They had bigger displays, more memory and were waterproof, but I still appreciate the originals.
The first time I saw a fitbit I knew I had to have one, but I ended up getting a Samsung smart watch instead because it had a lot more features. It came out a couple years before the Apple Watch. I realized after I got it that there were extreme limitations compared to a real heart rate monitor because of the sensors. It does have a multitude of other features and it can do quite a bit with the data especially when used with the GPS an other features of your phone. But it feels like it is keeping track of everything in an intrusive way, where the phone and it are sharing data with Samsung which even though it has little if any value to anyone else still kind of pisses me off a bit.
Yeah, mine was just a read out only. My chest strap broke a few times until finally the actual chest piece broke.
That is what typically happened with the chest straps. Most of the early ones used the same transmission method so they would pick up the signal even from other brands. This made it easy to find replacements, but meant if you were near someone else wearing a HR monitor that they frequently would interfere with each other. Polar came out with “coded” straps to fix this... but they were more expensive and the batteries were not replaceable. But people quickly figured out how to cut them open, find the screws, replace the battery and seal them back up.
Not to keep beating a dead horse, but I came across this article about the accuracy of fitness trackers like the Fitbit and Apple Watch which use optical sensors. While people were walking between 2 and 6 mph the Apple Watch was accurate to around + or - 30 beats per minute, while the Fitbit was accurate to around + or - 40 beats per minute. This mirrors my own experience with these types of sensors.
The goof ball EKG display and claims of medical certification about the Apple Watch implies extreme accuracy, but this only applies when one is sitting still.
It is almost comical when we had accurate devices over 30 years ago, and now people are clamoring for more expensive highly inaccurate devices with gimmicky feature sets and/or fancy displays. I have been as vulnerable to the hype as others, having made purchases. But the term “fitness tracker” seems funny when they are only accurate when the person wearing one is not in motion.
https://www.livescience.com/56459-fitness-tracker-heart-rate-monitors-accuracy.html
When I was a courier walker (not biking or car) I did 3 or 4 times that daily.
I disagree—to an extent.
There is a benefit to even taking a few thousand steps, if all you ever do is sit a chair all day and sleep at night.
Thanks for the great advice and input. I was wondering how a device worn on your wrist was going to detect your pulse when the pulse point is on the opposite side...
I don’t know if any of my long winded diatribe had that much value. I actually do use the heart rate monitor on my Samsung smart watch occasionally, I just don’t place much trust in the number. My phone has a sensor you can press your finger against and I use it occasionally as well.
Wrist mounted optical sensors work OK when you are sitting still, but are pretty iffy when you are moving even when you strap them on tightly. The optical sensors on exercise equipment that clip to your ear actually work surprisingly well for some people on a rower or exercise bike, but I find them to be a little uncomfortable.
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