Walking 10,000 steps daily appears to improve overall health.

Walking 9,000 to 10,000 steps a day appears to reduce the risk of early death and heart-related events, adding legitimacy to an idea that has been criticized as unscientific.

The exact origins of the popular belief that people should aim for 10,000 steps a day are unknown, but it is believed to be related to a marketing campaign promoting pedometers in Japan.

Now, research by Matthew Ahmadi Professors at the University of Sydney in Australia suggest that this number may have some value.

The researchers analyzed more than 72,000 participants in the UK Biobank study, with an average age of 61, who wore movement-tracking accelerometers on their wrists for a week. “We were able to quantify the number of steps we took each day,” Ahmadi says.

Participants were then followed for an average of just under seven years, during which time there were 1,633 deaths and 6,190 heart disease-related events. The researchers found that the optimal number of steps per day is 9,000, after adjusting for other factors that may influence the risk of illness and death during that period, such as diet quality, smoking status, and other physical activity. I calculated it to be ~10,000 steps, after which the benefits begin to gradually decrease.

Doing so was found to reduce the risk of death by 39% and risk of heart-related events by 21% during the follow-up period.

“This paper will help the field take a major step forward in refining the science behind physical activity and sedentary time guidelines. Pardon the pun,” he says. Dale Esliger At Loughborough University, UK. “It seems to support the idea that the 10,000 step goal, which is not evidence-based to begin with, may indeed be about right.”

However, on the other hand nicolas berger Researchers at Britain’s Teesside University said the study was “very well designed” using “rigorous methodology and statistical analysis”, but Esliger said the wrist-worn acceleration It says that the meter is not always the best indicator of step count.

The researchers also didn’t take into account the number of steps taken per minute. “Probably about 6,000 steps performed at a higher cadence may be just as protective of your health as 10,000 steps at a slower pace,” Esliger says.