If you’ve ever used wearable exercise monitors, you may be familiar with the celebratory buzz when you hit your daily 10,000 step target – as well as the disappointment when that doesn’t happen.
But a new study reveals that health benefits start when you take as few as 3,967 daily steps – including reducing your risk of dying from a range of causes.
The research also found that a minimum of 2,337 steps was enough to reduce the risk of death from cardiovascular diseases. These diseases affect the heart and blood vessels and can cause heart attacks.
Published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, the paper brought together data from 17 existing studies involving 226,889 people.
It’s the first to assess the impacts of walking up to 20,000 steps a day, as well as whether the risk of dying differs depending on age, sex, or where in the world people live.
The answer? The study found that the more you walk, the better – regardless of your age, sex, or the climatic conditions of your region.
In fact, the scientists found that every additional 1,000 steps a day you do on top of the minimum reduces your risk of death by 15 per cent.
These benefits keep increasing with no upper limit, according to the scientists. The data reveals that for those walking fanatics who stride as many as 20,000 times a day, the benefits only continue to build.
Insufficient physical activity is the fourth biggest risk factor for death across the world, according to World Health Organization – being associated with 3.2 million deaths a year.
This is something the study’s lead author, Professor Maciej Banach of the Medical University of Lodz, Poland, and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, USA, hopes to combat.
He said: “In a world where we have more and more advanced drugs to target specific conditions such as cardiovascular disease, I believe we should always emphasise that lifestyle changes, including diet and exercise […] might be at least as or even more effective in reducing cardiovascular risk and prolonging lives.”
One limitation of this study was its lower levels of data on people with higher step counts – up to 20,000 a day – meaning these results need to be confirmed in a study with a larger data set.
Further research, the authors advise, should also investigate the benefits of more intensive exercise such as running marathons. These studies may also look into the specific benefits of walking to different ages and races, and people with existing health problems.
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