How Many Steps Do We Need Each Day

Step counters have become a common feature of wearable technology and many of us are tracking how many steps we are taking each day. This begs the question of just how many steps do we really need to improve our health? A common answer is 10,000 steps, but there isn’t a whole lot of science behind this number. 

The Study

This interesting investigation appeared in JAMA Internal Medicine several years ago. 17,708 subjects with a mean baseline age of 72 years from the Women’s Health Study wore accelerometers for a 4 year follow up (Reference 1).  By the end of this time, 504 women had died.

The women were split into quartiles depending on the average number of steps taken per day. The results were a bit surprising:

The 1^st quartile averaged 2,718 steps per day and was the reference group (the group the other quartiles were compared to).

The 2^nd quartile averaged 4,363 steps per day and had a 46% lower risk of death from any cause when compared to the 1^st quartile.

The 3^rd quartile averaged 5,905 steps per day and had a 53% lower risk of death from any cause.

The 4^th quartile averaged 8,442 steps per day and had a 66% lower risk of death from any cause.

There were a couple of other surprising findings:

-The mortality benefit leveled off at 7,500 steps. Doing more than this did not really improve risk of dying from any cause.

-Step intensity wasn’t particularly important. The number of steps is all that really mattered. In other words, how fast you walked did not appreciably impact the reduction in risk of dying from any cause.

Conclusions And Recommendations

I think it is great when fitness and nutrition theories are put to the test of a well-designed research study.

A few take home messages:

-If your goal is general health improvement and chronic disease risk reduction, don’t worry about hitting 10,000 steps per day, 7,500 will get the job done.

-Don’t worry about how fast you are walking. It does not seem to matter all that much.

-If your goal is weight loss, higher intensity and longer duration of cardio is likely more important.

-It is not all or nothing. Although the sweet spot for improved health was 7,500 steps, significant benefit was found in subjects walking just over 4,000 steps per day.

References

1) JAMA Intern Med. 2019;179(8):1105-1112