Tag Archive for: 10000 steps

Walking for Fitness

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The message from Tuesday’s Memo was that walking over 4,000 steps per day can bring health benefits from several diseases and conditions, and the benefits increase the more steps you take—up to about 12,000 steps, the highest that were recorded in the studies. What I didn’t say was that those were not all workout steps. Some people certainly included their exercise steps within those steps taken when they wore tracking devices, but most totals just reflected a person’s normal activity.

What if you could boost the benefits you get? We know that fitness levels decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease at every age. What if you turned up the intensity of the steps you already take? Research shows fitter people live longer in every age group—even those in their 80s and 90s—so it makes sense to challenge yourself and increase your fitness level.

Three Ways to Boost Fitness While Walking

1. Walk faster. You can be precise and count seconds or steps, or you can pick spots where you have the room and just walk faster. How fast? It depends on your fitness level and orthopedic issues, but a goal could be 5% of your steps in a day. If you averaged 4,000 steps per day, that would be 200 steps broken into 10 segments of 20 steps. You could increase that over time to 10% of your daily steps.

2. Walk up hills. Use the same idea as with walking faster. In my neighborhood, I’m usually going up a hill or down one. I do about 150 steps up a hill as fast as I can and then saunter back to the bottom of the hill. Again, use the same concept as you would with walking faster: time or percentage of total steps.

3. Use the stairs. Every step is a step, but a step bearing your weight is even better. Every floor will have between 10-15 steps between floors. You can even do this in your home. Same logic regarding time or percentage of total steps.

Should You Take a Companion?

Years ago, Paula’s cousin decided to improve his fitness, so he’d go out for a walk every evening. He’s not a scary guy but he lives in a nice neighborhood, and several times he was questioned by police patrolling the area. So he got a dog to take with him on his evening walks—and he was never questioned again.

The Bottom Line

Walking is a great form of exercise, and we’ve seen the benefits from the research on mortality and morbidity, but examining the walking speed in those studies shows that most steps taken by most people were between two and three mph. That’s pretty slow. We also know that being fitter increases benefits regardless of age. If you get your doctor’s permission to exercise more strenuously, adding some type of higher intensity challenges one or two times a week can increase your fitness level without spending any more time than you currently are.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

References:
1. Lancet Public Health 2025; 10: e668–81
2. JAMA Intern Med. 2019. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.0899.
3. JACC. 2022. Fitness and Mortality. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2022.05.031

Is the 10,000-Steps Goal a Myth?

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One of the things many people do for fitness is try to get 10,000 steps per day. Researchers recently wanted to know whether that many steps really gives a person any health advantage, because the concept of 10,000 steps per day wasn’t based on any real science—it came from a Japanese company who invented a wearable step counter in 1965 and just made up a number that sounds good.

Researchers analyzed data from 16,741 older women who agreed to wear a step counter at least 10 hours per day for at least four days a week during waking hours. They divided the subjects into quartiles based on the number of steps per day. After four years of follow-up, they discovered that hazard ratios declined as the number of steps per day increased. No real surprise there. What was surprising was that there were no additional benefits after 7,500 steps per day; in fact, the mortality began to decline with as little as 4,400 steps per day.

Is the goal of 10,000 steps per day a myth? Not in my opinion; most of us are too sedentary most of the time. The mean age of the subjects in this study was 72. It may be that younger women need more steps to impact mortality because they have potentially more years to live; then maybe after reaching 72, they can scale back. Hard to say. But they looked at mortality only; 10,000 steps per day may have benefits they didn’t examine.

I would have thought walking intensity might have had an impact, but it didn’t in this study. However, another recently published study may provide more insight, especially as it relates to obesity. We’ll take a look on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: JAMA Intern Med. 2019. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.0899.