"The groundwork of all happiness is health." - Leigh Hunt

Study: Just 4,000 steps a day result in an extended life

August 9, 2023 – A latest study suggests that far fewer than 10,000 steps a day are enough to have a profound impact in your health. In fact, the minimum number is fewer than 5,000 steps a day to cut back the danger of early death.

The results were published this week in European Journal of Preventive CardiologyFor the evaluation, the researchers compiled data from 226,889 people from 17 previous studies. They checked out day by day steps and whether the people had died from any cause or from heart-related causes inside a 7-year period. The average age of the study participants was 64 years and 49% were female.

The results included:

  • The place to begin for reducing the danger of death from any cause was a minimum variety of 3,967 steps per day.
  • A minimum variety of 2,337 steps per day was the place to begin for determining that the danger of dying from heart problems (including heart attack and stroke) decreases.
  • For every additional 1,000 steps per day, an individual's risk of death from any cause decreases by 15%.
  • For every additional 500 steps per day, an individual's risk of dying from heart problems is reduced by 7%.

The risk reduction was greater in people under 60 than in older people. People aged 59 and younger who walked between 7,000 and 13,000 steps per day reduced their risk of death by 49%. People aged 60 and older who walked between 6,000 and 10,000 steps per day reduced their risk of death by 42%.

The researchers were unable to find out an upper limit for the variety of steps per day which can be helpful – the more steps someone took, the greater their risk reduction. The highest variety of steps per day analyzed within the study was 20,000.

“Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better,” said Polish researcher Maciej Banach, MD, PhD in a opinion“We found that this is true for both men and women, regardless of age and regardless of whether you live in a temperate, subtropical or subpolar region of the world or a region with a mixed climate.”

It just isn’t clear where the oft-cited goal of 10,000 steps comes from, in response to the authors of a 2019 study published in JAMA Internal MedicineIt is feasible, they wrote, that it was a part of a marketing campaign for a pedometer developed in Japan within the Nineteen Sixties.

The World Health Organization It is estimated that 3.2 million deaths every year are because of an absence of physical activity.