Published on
Updated
Reading 3 min.
Is it essential to take 10,000 steps a day to maintain good health? It is in any case necessary, because the more you walk, the greater the benefits, as revealed by a new international study. But the latter also suggests that taking 4,000 steps daily could already be enough to reduce the risk of death from all causes. Explanations.
The recommendations are clear: taking 10,000 steps per day would help preserve your health. This is also the threshold to reach to receive an alert on your smartphone, and to be congratulated for having covered the distance necessary to stay in shape. But a new study carried out on more than 200,000 people reveals that it would not be essential to do the same to see the first health benefits appear. This does not mean that you should walk less, but that the risk of death reduces significantly as the number of steps increases, and this from 4,000 steps if we focus on all causes of death.
A minimum of 2,337 steps per day
Published in the journal European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, this work was carried out on 226,889 people from 17 different studies around the world, followed on average for seven years. At the end of their research, scientists estimated the number of daily steps necessary to reduce the risk of death associated with cardiovascular disease at 2,337. A number that rises to 3,967 daily steps to reduce the risk of death from all causes. Be careful though, it’s not about walking less. The study indeed confirms that the more you walk, the greater the health benefits, up to (at least) 20,000 steps per day.
“Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better. We found that this applied to both men and women, regardless of age, and whether you live in a temperate or subtropical region. or subpolar world, or in a region where climates mix”, underlines Professor Maciej Banach, lead author of the study, in a press release. This work shows that the risk of death drops significantly as soon as an individual takes 500 to 1,000 additional steps daily. In detail, an increase of 1,000 steps per day is associated with a 15% reduction in the risk of death from all causes, and an increase of 500 steps is associated with a 7% reduction in the risk of death from cardiovascular diseases.
Fight against a sedentary lifestyle
The researchers observed that the health benefits continued to increase up to 20,000 steps per day, the limit of steps analyzed for the purposes of this study. However, they point out that data remains limited for participants who took 20,000 steps per day, and that additional research needs to be carried out with a larger group of people to confirm these results. In all cases, they believe that walking, whatever the number of steps, is essential today, if only to fight against a sedentary lifestyle, considered one of the evils of the century.
“In a world where we have increasingly sophisticated medications to treat specific conditions such as cardiovascular disease, I think we should always emphasize that lifestyle changes, including diet and “Physical exercise could be at least as effective, if not more effective, in reducing cardiovascular risk and prolonging the lives of those affected.”concludes Professor Maciej Banach.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a sedentary lifestyle is responsible for 3.2 to 5 million deaths each year worldwide. The world health authority recalls that 70% of the population does not follow the recommendations for physical activity worldwide – namely moderate-intensity endurance activity at least 150 to 300 minutes per week for an adult aged 18 to 64.