There’s growing evidence that getting your steps in really does count, but you may not need to hit 10,000 steps a day to gain health benefits, according to a new study.
The number of steps a person needs to walk in a day in order to decrease the risk of heart disease is lower than previously thought, researchers found.
The new study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, is the largest ever to measure the positive impact of daily walking and step-counting and includes data from about 230,000 individuals from around the world.
Researchers found that walking about 4,000 steps per day is a good target because people who hit the 4,000 step-mark saw their risk of dying from any cause go down.
“The number of steps over which we might observe significant benefits seems to be lower than we previously thought,” said Maciej Banach, one of the authors of the study and professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
But health benefits do increase the more people walk, Banach said.
“Obviously, the most pronounced, the highest reduction in mortality was shown for steps over 6,000 to 7,000,” he said.
The more steps, the better
Researchers looked at people who walked different amounts per day (4,000; 5,500; 7,300; 11,500) and found more steps corresponded with greater health impacts and lower chances of dying from any cause and dying from heart disease.
The study also included data on people who walk up to 20,000 steps per day and found they experienced the greatest health benefits.
“We found this effect of, the more the better, is also applied to steps up to 20,000 per day,” Banach said.
But “there is no magic number,” said Amanda Paluch, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who also studies step-counting. “It’s those incremental increases, and also, if you’re at a higher lever, you shouldn’t stop what you’re doing.”
Do I need to walk 10,000 steps a day? No, authors say
The study, which examined results from 17 smaller studies on walking, found all participants, no matter their age or gender, experienced similar health benefits from daily walking. Walking any number of steps per day is associated with positive health impacts, according to Banach.
Banach said some of his patients get discouraged that they can’t walk 10,000 steps a day because of busy work schedules. Paluch agreed the 10,000 number that commonly gets thrown around can feel “far-reaching and defeating” for most people.
“Our study shows that it might be an even lower number, it might be 4,000 to 5,000 to see the health benefits and survival improvement and mortality reduction,” Banach said.
Banach encourages his patients to try to get in 3,000 or 4,000 steps a day. He noted consistently sees his patients improve their step counts after starting at lower numbers.
“You see the greatest incremental benefits by going from nothing to something. It’s really where we see the greatest bang for your buck,” said Paluch, whose 2022 study on step-counting found similar results. “If you’re starting at very low step levels, you don’t have to worry about getting to that 10,000 number.”
Here’s what else researchers found:
◾ Walking about 2,300 steps a day can reduce the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease (disease of the heart and blood vessels).
◾ Increasing the number of steps you walk per day by 1,000 or even 500 steps will lower your chances of death.
◾ It doesn’t matter what age someone starts walking daily, Banach said. “The health benefits still exist even if you start at the age of 60, 65, 70 years of age,” he said.