Walking 10,000 steps is good for our health after all

A recent study found that walking between 9,000 and 10,000 steps each day is linked to a lower risk of early death or heart related events, such as a heart attack.

It is a common belief that walking 10,000 steps per day is good for you, but it is unknown where this claim comes from.

A recent study by Matthew Ahmadi at the University of Sydney, Australia, has now added some legitimacy to this advice which was previously labelled as unscientific.

The research involved more than 72,000 participants with an average age of 61 from the UK Biobank study. This study involved wearing a movement-tracking accelerometer for a week which allowed the Australian researchers to quantify each individuals’ daily steps.

For almost seven years, the participants were tracked. Within this time, 1,633 people died and 6,190 events occurred related to heart disease.

Once the researchers adjusted for factors that could influence the risk of death or illness, they found that the ideal number of steps per day was between 9,000 and 10,000.

This number of steps was linked to a 39% lower risk of death and 21% lower risk of heart related events within the tracking period.

Dale Esliger said: “This paper helps the field take a great stride forward, pardon the pun, in refining the science that underpins physical activity and sedentary time guidelines.

“It does appear to support the notion that the originally non-evidence based 10,000 steps target may indeed be about right.”

Although the researchers calculated steps per day, they did not calculate steps per minute. Esliger added: “It may be that around 6,000 steps performed at a higher cadence may be just as health protective as 10,000 slower steps.”