The news has spread that daily steps provide health benefits, but how many steps must you take? Is 10,000 steps the magic number for daily walks? Just how beneficial are those footfalls? Seniors Guide writer Eric Wallace chases the studies and shares the findings.
You may have heard that taking 10,000 steps a day offers physical and mental health benefits. That translates to about five miles, and hitting that goal can be challenging.
Taking a 30-minute walk at a decent clip, for instance, only yields about 3,000 steps. “I often hear people talk about walking 10,000 steps a day, and you really don’t know how difficult that is until you try to do it consistently,” wrote Scott Luu. “It was very, very difficult to do at home.”
But don’t fret: New studies have shown that smaller doses of daily steps can net positive long-term effects. Research published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, for instance, found that walking just 500 extra steps a day – i.e. a quarter-mile – reduced the risk of cardiovascular death by 7%, and doubling that number slashed chances of dying from all causes by 15%. What’s more, the protective benefits increased with each additional thousand-step increment. Risks of all-cause death for adults over the age of 60, for example, dropped by 42% if they clocked between 6,000 and 10,000 steps a day.
On top of that, a reported study in JAMA Neurology found that 9,800 steps daily meant a 50% lower likelihood of developing dementia. Another one in Circulation reported that older adults who walk 6,000 to 9,000 steps had a 40% to 50% lower risk of cardiovascular disease versus 2,000 steps.
“Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better,” said lead researcher Maciej Banach, professor of cardiology at the Medical University of Lodz, Poland. “We found that this applied to both men and women, irrespective of age, and irrespective of whether you live in a temperate, subtropical, or subpolar region of the world, or a region with a mixture of climates.”
Taking steps to boost recovery after surgery
The Journal of the American College of Surgeons reported on a study relevant to surgical recovery. Researchers used wearable devices like Apple Watches to track patients’ steps (with a mean age of 50.4) for about a month on either side on an inpatient surgery. They found that those who walked more before and after admission left the hospital sooner, experienced fewer complications, and were much less likely to be readmitted.
“With every thousand steps that a patient took, it was roughly equivalent to about an 18% reduction in their chance of having a complication or a poor outcome,” said Timothy Paluk, study co-author and Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center surgical oncologist . “This can be empowering to patients because it puts it within their reach that they can actually… take action to really improve their outcomes.”
Paluk hopes that pre- and post- surgery step monitoring will be used in the future to help motivate patients and provide doctors with a valuable metric for gauging recovery.
More steps provide health benefits, but ‘start where you are’
University of Massachusetts-Amherst assistant professor of kinesiology, Amanda Paluch, describes the deluge of new findings as a golden goose. In terms of the health benefits of walking, we now know “it is not an all-or-nothing situation,” Paluch told Powers Health. Don’t feel discouraged and give up if you’re not logging 10,000 steps regularly. Instead, “start where you are,” Paluch said. “There is benefit to making small, incremental increases in steps per day.”
Wearable technology like a smartwatch or Fitbit make tracking steps easy. But old-school methods like a pedometer, stopwatch, or timer work, too. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for instance, estimates the average walking pace to be about 20 minutes per mile – so 20 minutes should net you about 2,000 total steps.
Starting out at a 1,000-step baseline? Set a goal to tackle 2,000 a dat by the end of the month. Establish the increase as part of your daily routine, then look to add another 500 steps. Short bursts of activity like a midday walk with the dog, or quick lap around the block can make it easier to hit your target number. Stick with the program and these seemingly small increases will add up to big benefits over time.
“I think it’s important for people to realize that they’re not failing if they don’t get to 10,000 steps,” said Ciarán Friel, Feinstein Institutes behavioral scientist and exercise physiologist. In reality, “every little bit helps.”
