10,000 steps a day, really? It depends on the age

Did you know that the injunction 10,000 steps per day comes from a Japanese advertising campaign for a pedometer on the occasion of the Tokyo Olympics? A team has studied the exact number of steps needed per day to maintain good health and increase life expectancy. It turns out that it depends on age.

The practice of a sports activity improves our state of health physical by reducing, for example, the risk of cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and many cancers. This also promotes a good mental health. Overall, being active improves our life expectancy!

The number of steps per day is a good reflection of a person’s physical activity. With current telephones, this is a very easy measure to implement! If the motto 10,000 steps per day » has the advantage of being easy to remember, it is not always easy to apply it every day. Moreover, few good quality scientific studies have been conducted on the subject. One item recently published in the prestigious Lancet pondered the question.

A meta-analysis on more than 45,000 subjects

The authors carried out a meta-analysis of 15 publications on the link between the number of steps per day and all-cause mortality in individuals over 18 years of age. A meta-analysis is a statistical method that allows the synthesis of data from independent studies. The work brought together 47,471 subjects. Among them, 3,013 died during the duration of the study. The follow-up period was over seven years.

The participants were grouped into four groups, each comprising 25% of the participants (quartiles). In each group, the median number of steps was:

• group 1: 3,553 steps per day;
• group 2: 5,801 steps per day;
• group 3: 7,842 steps per day;
• group 4: 10,901 steps per day.

For information, the median is the midpoint of a dataset. That is to say that in group 1, there were as many people who walked less than 3,553 steps per day as people who walked more than 3,553 steps per day.

Different results according to age

Statistical analysis of the results showed that the number of steps needed to obtain a protective effect on health and life expectancy was different before and after 60 years.

The ideal would be to to walk 6,000 to 8,000 steps per day for those over 60 and 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day for those under 60. Even more interesting, the effect is dose-dependent! The more we walk, the more we increase our life expectancy. On the other hand, for the over 60s for example, from 8,000 steps per day, there is no longer any additional gain in matter life expectancy.

Furthermore, the speed walking would have no impact. It’s encouraging ! The main thing is to get active, each at their own pace.