The notion to take 10,000 daily steps stems from a marketing ploy: as the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics approached, a Japanese researcher decided to nudge his nation to be more active by offering pedometers with a name that loosely translated as “10,000-step meter”. (The Japanese character for the number 10,000 looks a little like a person walking.)
More recently, scientists have come up with evidence-based recommendations about step-count goals. I recently spoke with some of the world’s leading experts on the science of step counting. Here’s their advice.
Your step count goal may be lower than you think
In the past few years, multiple large-scale studies have stepped up, looking closely into how many steps we probably need for our health and longevity. In the largest, published last year in the Lancet Public Health, dozens of global researchers pooled data from 15 earlier step-count studies, some unpublished, covering 47,471 adults of all ages, and compared their typical daily step counts to their longevity.
Smaller bursts of exercise daily can be more effective than one bulk session, research has found. The sweet spot for step counts was not 10,000 or more. In general, the pooled data showed that for men and women younger than age 60, the greatest relative reductions in the risk of dying prematurely came with step counts of between about 8000 and 10,000 per day.
For people older than age 60, the threshold was a little lower. For them, the sweet spot in terms of reduced mortality risk came at between 6000 and 8000 steps a day.Walking more than 10,000 steps a day wasn’t bad for people – it didn’t increase the risk of dying – but also didn’t add much, in terms of reducing mortality risks.
The benefits also weren’t confined to longevity. In other studies, step counts of at least 8000 a day for adults substantially lowered risks for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia, depression, many types of cancer and even sleep apnoea, says Janet Fulton, senior science adviser in the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Even a small increase in daily steps is good for you
Not managing 8000 steps a day at the moment? Or 6000? Or even 5000? You’re not alone. Before the pandemic, most Australians were averaging 7400 steps a day. And COVID-19 seems to have reduced many people’s daily step counts by 10 per cent or more, according to some recent research, with daily activity levels only slowly returning to pre-pandemic levels.
How do you begin to increase your step counts? Even very small increases in daily steps are good for you.
“I suggest starting with an increase of about 500 to 1000 steps per day,” says Ulf Ekelund, a professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences who studies physical activity and was one of the co-authors of the Lancet step-count study.
Other researchers agree. “We currently consider 500 steps a day as the minimum target for increased activity in inactive individuals,” says Thomas Yates, a professor of physical activity, sedentary behaviour and health at the University of Leicester in England.
Every week or two, try accumulating another 500 or 1000 steps, Ekelund says, until you reach at least 8000 a day, or 6000 if you’re past age 60.
You don’t need an expensive step counter
“Phones or watches are reasonably accurate,” says I-Min Lee, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who studies physical activity.
But not everyone owns a watch or similar activity tracker, Fulton says, while “almost everyone has a smartphone now”. And almost every smartphone, Apple or Android, contains an accelerometer, which is a movement tracker, that can tell you how many steps you take, Fulton says.
These devices are not as accurate as the research-grade accelerometers used in scientific studies, Ekelund says, and their readings may differ enough that your step count will be different from mine at the end of our identical walk.
But these issues are relatively trivial, Yates says. Most phones and other types of trackers “are reasonably reliable,” he says, and if they over- or under-estimate your steps somewhat, they’ll do so “consistently”, so you can track your progress.
A more intractable problem may be that many of us don’t carry our phones all the time, says Charles Matthews, a physical activity epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute and another co-author of the Lancet study. If your phone sits on your desk, it won’t count your steps.
So, for an accurate measure of total daily steps, bring your phone as you amble. Carry it in your pocket, purse, or hand. The accelerometer should pick up your movements regardless, he says.
Learn step count maths
Here’s some basic step-count maths: 1000 steps is about 800 metres. Want to go that extra distance? For most of us, 2000 steps is about 1.6 kilometres, depending on stride length. So, taking 10,000 steps would mean walking for about eight kilometres.
Speed doesn’t matter
In terms of time, a half-hour of walking equals about 3000 steps for most of us, if we don’t hurry.
The good news is we probably don’t need to hurry. In almost all of the recent studies of step counts and mortality, the intensity of the steps, meaning how fast people walked, didn’t seem to matter much. It’s the overall number of steps they took throughout the day that made a difference.
Intensity is the “icing” on the cake, Matthews says. Walking faster has the potential to amplify the health benefits of walking, but only slightly, he says.The key is to walk as frequently as you can manage, whatever your pace.
Step goals aren’t about weight loss
Walking is not a calorie zapper. In broad terms, accumulating 2000 steps, which is walking for about a mile, burns about 100 calories for an average adult moving at a strolling pace.
Your typical doughnut contains about 300 calories. An apple has about 100. Even 10,000 steps a day adds up to only about 500 calories.
It’s easier to count steps than minutes of exercise
Why count steps at all? Because, for most of us, it’s a simpler, more-concrete goal than accumulating “150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per week”, as the Australian Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines recommends.
“I have stopped trying to explain and prescribe the physical activity guidelines to my patients,” says William Kraus, a professor of medicine at Duke University, who was involved in writing the 2018 guidelines. “They do not understand them and cannot absorb them. I have gone to prescribing steps. I tell them they need to get to a minimum of 7000 steps per day.”
“Some is good, more is better,” Lee says, and the first step is to just get up and take a few steps.
This article originally appeared in The Washington Post.
Every single morning for the past 11 years, Libby DeLana has walked out her back door at 5:30 no matter the weather, how tired she may be, or even how sick. “It’s not about the miles or the number of steps,” says DeLana, author of the book Do Walk: Navigate earth, mind, and body.
Step by step. and co-host of the podcast The Morning Walk. “This practice is about fidelity to myself and knowing what it is that creates a sense of well-being in my body, and that includes significant time in the outdoors and putting my eyes to the sun and feeling the breeze on my face.”
DeLana, who lives just north of Boston, Massachusetts, walks through all four seasons and regularly covers eight to ten miles per day. Even when she’s sick, she says, she’ll get out for a slow, gentle walk around the block just to move and put one foot in front of the other.
“For me, the walk is like a seated practice of meditation,” says DeLana. “The quiet is revealing. Obviously, there’s the sound of the natural world—the sound of the waves or the wind or the birds, but there are a lot of messages from the quiet.”
Daily movement has been part of human evolution for thousands of years, and DeLana has found that making movement a nonnegotiable part of her own daily routine is good for mind, body, and spirit. But keeping up that consistency, day after day, in all kinds of weather and trail conditions, requires good gear—especially shoes…..
HIIT workouts and heavy lifts tend to steal the workout limelight, but good, old-fashioned walking is actually having a moment. In fact, more people are taking recreational jaunts now than before the pandemic, according to a June 2021 study in Nature. That’s because in as little as 10 minutes a day, you can reap the health benefits of walking.
“Studies show that people who walk for 10 minutes a day have noticeable improvements in cardiovascular health, decreased mortality and increased longevity and better overall fitness,” says R. Kannan Mutharasan, MD, co-program director of sports cardiology at the Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. “The benefits of walking keep going up until you hit about 30 minutes a day.”
According to a June 2013 study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, doing daily 10-minute stair walks improved the heart health of adults with sedentary jobs. A January 2022 study in JAMA Internal Medicine also found 10 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity daily, such as walking, is associated with a 6.9 percent decrease in the number of deaths per year.
Bonus: There are no bells or whistles required when getting your steps in. “Simply put on a pair of comfortable sneakers and head outside,” Dr. Mutharasan says. (Or hop on the treadmill!)
While sauntering has a lot going for it, should you make it an everyday form of exercise — or is it better to mix things up with your fitness routine? Here, we break down what really happens to your body if you lace up for a daily walk.
Your Heart Gets Stronger
If you want to show your heart some love, hit the pavement every day. “Walking gets your heart rate up, which improves its pumping function,” Dr. Mutharasan says.Your heart is a muscle, after all. Giving it a workout — say, by forcing it to pump rapidly during a moderate-intensity walk — will strengthen it.
Stick with daily walks, and over time your heart will be able to move blood through your system more easily and efficiently. Walking every day also increases your cardiovascular endurance, allowing you to exercise longer and harder.
“Putting your cardiovascular system under a bit of stress by walking improves blood flow, which increases oxygenation to your bones, organs and muscles,” says Farah Hameed, MD, assistant professor of Rehabilitation and Regenerative Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.”This, in turn, normalizes blood pressure and cholesterol and blood sugar levels, which lowers the risk of diabetes and heart disease.”
Your Bones and Joints Stay Healthy
Because walking is a weight-bearing activity, making time for it every day keeps your bones healthy, boosting bone density and decreasing your risk of osteoporosis and fractures. “Walking puts stress on your bones, which helps them maintain their strength,” Dr. Hameed says. She notes you don’t get the same bone benefits when you do non-weight-bearing exercise, like biking or swimming.
And although resistance training is hailed as the most powerful antidote for brittle bones, particularly as you age, walking every day targets areas that weightlifting might miss. “For example, squats and lunges pull on the bone,” Dr. Hameed says, “but walking stimulates bones throughout the entirety of the foot and leg.”
The movement in your hips, knees and ankles also helps pump nutrient-rich synovial fluid into the cartilage in your joints. “This helps maintain the lifespan of your joints,” says Natasha Trentacosta, MD, pediatric and adult sports medicine specialist and orthopedic surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles.
A daily walk also strengthens the muscles, tendons and ligaments surrounding your joints so they are better able to support the weight of your body, instead of the whole load landing on your joints. This reduces your risk of pain and injury……
The first handheld cellphone call was made 50 years ago, and since then these devices have become an essential multi-tool that helps us run our lives. But are they also altering the way our brains work? Like many of us, I spend too much time on my phone. And, like many of us, I am acutely aware of – and often feel guilty about – this fact.
Sometimes, I’ll leave it at the other end of the house, or turn it off, to use it less. But, sooner than I’d like to admit, I’ll wind up walking down the hallway for something I need to do that I can only – or can do more efficiently – by phone. Paying a bill? Phone. Arranging a coffee date with a friend? Phone. Messaging family who live far away?
Phone. Checking the weather, jotting down a story idea, taking a picture or video, creating a photo book, listening to a podcast, loading up driving directions, making a quick calculation, even turning on a torch? Phone, phone, phone.
The first cellphone call
Martin ‘Marty’ Cooper spoke to the BBC about the first ever mobile phone call, which he made 50 years ago from a beige, brick-sized device that looks very different from today’s sleek, glass-covered smartphones.
Although his device had no messaging, no camera and only 30 minutes of talk time after 10 hours of battery charging, he doesn’t think much of the modern smartphone as a device for making phone calls.
“It’s really not a very good phone in many respects,” says Cooper. “Just think about it. You take a piece of plastic and glass that’s flat – and you put it against the curve of your head. You hold your hand in an uncomfortable position.”
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.
A new paper suggests that it takes far less exercise than was previously thought to lower blood sugar after eating. Walking after a meal, conventional wisdom says, helps clear your mind and aids in digestion. Scientists have also found that going for a 15-minute walk after a meal can reduce blood sugar levels, which can help ward off complications such as Type 2 diabetes. But, as it turns out, even just a few minutes of walking can activate these benefits.
In a meta-analysis, recently published in the journal Sports Medicine, researchers looked at the results of seven studies that compared the effects of sitting versus standing or walking on measures of heart health, including insulin and blood sugar levels. They found that light walking after a meal, in increments of as little as two to five minutes, had a significant impact in moderating blood sugar levels.
“Each small thing you do will have benefits, even if it is a small step,” said Dr. Kershaw Patel, a preventive cardiologist at Houston Methodist Hospital who was not involved in the study.
Very light walking reduces blood sugar levels.
In five of the studies that the paper evaluated, none of the participants had pre-diabetes or Type 2 diabetes. The remaining two studies looked at people with and without such illnesses. Participants were asked to either stand or walk for two to five minutes every 20 to 30 minutes over the course of a full day.
All seven studies showed that just a few minutes of light-intensity walking after a meal were enough to significantly improve blood sugar levels compared to, say, sitting at a desk or plopping down on the couch. When participants went for a short walk, their blood sugar levels rose and fell more gradually.
For people with diabetes, avoiding sharp fluctuations in blood sugar levels is a critical component in managing their illness. It’s also thought that sharp spikes and crashes in blood sugar levels can contribute to developing Type 2 diabetes.
Standing also helped lower blood sugar levels, although not to the degree that light walking did. “Standing did have a small benefit,” Aidan Buffey, a graduate student at the University of Limerick in Ireland and an author of the paper, said. Compared to sitting or standing, “light-intensity walking was a superior intervention,” he said.
That’s because light walking requires more active engagement of muscles than standing and uses the fuel from food at a time when there is a lot of it circulating in the bloodstream. “Your muscles will soak up some of that excess glucose,” said Jessie Inchauspé, author of the book “Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar.”
“You still had the same meal, but the impact on your body will be lessened,” she added.
Walking within 60 to 90 minutes after eating delivers the best results.
Although light walking at any time is good for your health, a short walk within 60 to 90 minutes of eating a meal can be especially useful in minimizing blood sugar spikes, as that is when blood sugar levels tend to peak.
Ms. Inchauspé also recommended getting up to do housework or finding other ways to move your body. This short amount of activity will also enhance other dietary changes that people may be making to help control their blood sugar levels.
“Moving even a little bit is worthwhile and can lead to measurable changes, as these studies showed, in your health markers,” Dr. Euan Ashley, a cardiologist at Stanford University who was not associated with the study, said.
Mini-walks are more practical during the workday.
Mr. Buffey, whose research focuses on physical activity interventions in workplace environments, noted that a mini-walk of two to three minutes is more practical during the workday. People “are not going to get up and run on a treadmill or run around the office,” he said, but they could get some coffee or even go for a stroll down the hallway.
For people working from home, he suggested a short walk around the block between Zoom meetings or after lunch. The more we normalize mini-walks during the workday, Mr. Buffey said, the more feasible they will be. “If you are in a rigid environment, that’s when the difficulties may come.” If you cannot take those few minutes to take a walk, Dr. Ashley said, “standing will get you some of the way there.”
The benefits of physical activity are never all or nothing, Dr. Patel said, but instead exist on a continuum. “It’s a gradual effect of more activity, better health,” he said. “Each incremental step, each incremental stand or brisk walk appears to have a benefit.”
After a satisfying meal with family and friends, if a little voice inside tells you it’s time to head out for a stroll, you may want to listen. Not only is a walk after eating a pleasant way to enjoy social connection with others, it also offers surprising benefits for your health. From improved digestion to better blood sugar management, a lap around the block (or further) might just be the perfect finishing touch to a meal.
Read on for five reasons to take a walk after breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
May Improve Digestion
The internal nudge you may feel toward getting up and out after a meal might be coming from your gut. Research shows that post-meal movement can actually help you better digest your food.
In a 2014 meta-analysis of 20 studies, walking was associated with faster gastric emptying (the rate at which the body moves food through the stomach).
Other, more recent, research has shown that physical activity can improve the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). According to a 2020 study, the severity of gastrointestinal symptoms in younger people with IBS was lessened when they took more steps in their day.2 (However, it’s unclear whether they walked immediately following a meal.)
Though some people may experience indigestion from working up a sweat after eating, overall, physical activity appears to have a protective effect on colon cancer risks, and possibly some other diseases in the GI tract.3 More research is still needed.
May Help Reduce Blood Sugar Levels
People with diabetes or other blood sugar issues could especially benefit from stepping out after mealtimes. A post-meal walk may help steady your blood glucose.
In a small 2013 study, older adults with pre-diabetes experienced better glycemic control from walking after meals than from merely taking a morning walk.
Another study yielded equivalent results, finding that people with type 2 diabetes had better blood sugar measures when they walked after meals, compared to a single daily walk. The most dramatic improvements occurred when walking after dinner.5 Sounds like good reason to take a quick stroll before settling into more sedentary activities for the evening!
May Help Regulate Blood Pressure
You’ve probably heard that exercise is a helpful means of lowering blood pressure. What you may not have heard is that timing brief walks throughout the day (such as after meals) could offer even more results for hypertension than one longer bout of exercise.
According to a 2016 study, the accumulated effects of 10-minute bouts of physical activity significantly brought down diastolic blood pressure in people with pre-hypertension.
Mealtimes can serve as a convenient trigger for working in these shorter bouts of light exercise.
May Reduce Heart Disease Risk
As you work to bring down your blood pressure with after-meal walks, you’ll do your body the additional favor of lowering your risk of heart disease. People who keep their blood pressure within healthy limits have less incidence of cardiovascular disease and stroke.
Since 47% of Americans have high blood pressure (and only one in four has it under control), we’d all do well to squeeze in a stroll after mealtimes.7
May Lessen Bloating
Whether you suffer with bloating as a result of occasional overeating, food sensitivities, or irritable bowel syndrome, a walk could be just the thing to tame a distended tummy.
As discussed above, research indicates that the more steps people with IBS get in a day, the less likely they may be to experience adverse symptoms, including bloating. And it’s not just people with IBS who could calm belly bloating with a walk around the block. A four-week study from 2021 found that when people with non-IBS-related bloating went for a 10-15 minute walk after meals, they reported relief.8
When bloating has you feeling uncomfortable after eating, consider a walk as quick, side effect-free treatment.
Your step count goal may be lower than you think
A more intractable problem may be that many of us don’t carry our phones all the time, says Charles Matthews, a physical activity epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute and another co-author of the Lancet study. If your phone sits on your desk, it won’t count your steps.
Your typical doughnut contains about 300 calories. An apple has about 100. Even 10,000 steps a day adds up to only about 500 calories.
