For a long time, the exercise guideline of “walking 10,000 steps a day is beneficial for health” has gained widespread popularity and admiration, despite its lack of scientific evidence and originating from a marketing campaign. However, new research provides scientific support for this fitness goal, indicating a significant positive correlation between the accumulated number of steps per day and personal health.
In a new study conducted at the University of Sydney, Australia, Matthew Ahmadi and his colleagues pointed out through their findings that walking 9,000 to 10,000 steps a day does help to prevent premature death and heart disease, making the “10,000 steps” goal worthy of our attention. In this study, more than 72,000 participants with an average age of 61 were included in the survey, wearing wrist-mounted activity accelerometers to track their daily activities.
Over the course of this study, which lasted about 7 years, 1,633 participants died, and 6,190 heart disease events were recorded. The researchers took into account other factors that might affect the risk of disease and mortality, such as eating habits, smoking status, and whether participants engaged in other types of exercise activities. In the end, they concluded that walking 9,000 to 10,000 steps daily is the optimal amount of activity for promoting health. When the number of daily steps exceeds this range, the health benefits gradually decrease.
Data during the study period indicates that controlling the number of walking steps to 9,000 to 10,000 per day can reduce the risk of death by 39% and the risk of heart-related diseases by 21%. Dale Esliger, an expert from Loughborough University in the UK, believes that this study provides significant support to the scientific nature of guidelines for improving physical activity and reducing sedentary time.
Although Dr. Nicolas Berger says the study is well-designed, utilizing careful and strict methods and statistical analyses, Esliger mentioned that using wrist accelerometers is not always the most accurate method of quantifying steps. He pointed out that the research did not take into account the number of steps per minute, and the number of steps at different walking speeds may have different health impacts; for example, energetically walking 6,000 steps quickly might have a similar health effect to slowly walking 10,000 steps.
