10,000 Steps

Have you ever wondered where the  “walk 10,000 steps a day” prescription originated from?

This prescription did not come from research or as medical advice.

It originated in the mid 1960’s from Japanese marketers trying to sell a pedometer called the “manpo-kei”, which translates roughly in English to “10,000 step meter”.

I know, right??

The question might be…. is 10,000 daily steps something to aspire to?

Is it still a good goal to have regardless of where it originated, even as a marketing ploy?

Let’s unpack that.

The WHO suggests that the 4th leading cause of death in the world is insufficient physical activity/sedentary lifestyle (often defined as less than 5000 steps per day) correlating to increased risk of death from any cause, from cardiovascular disease, from oncological disease, and a greater risk of Type 2 diabetes.

Lack of physical activity/sedentary lifestyle is sometimes called the disease of the 21st century.

We could say that physical activity is an important factor for decreased risk of death from any cause and has a protective effect for the issues surrounding metabolic syndrome and other disease.

Walking everyday, moving everyday, absolutely correlates to health metrics and what Dr. Peter Attia  calls our “health span” when speaking about longevity.

In order to have a higher chance of a healthier and more active health span we need daily movement.

Have you watched the documentary series called Live to 100, Secrets of the Blue Zones?  One of the common factors for living a very long and active life is regular daily movement.

The 10,000 step prescription, though, does not come from scientific evidence.

The optimal role of number of steps and its role in health has been unclear.

Recently a meta-analysis was published analyzing 17 studies following over 225,000 participants who were generally healthy or patients with a risk of cardiovascular disease for an average of 7 years.

The authors of this meta-analysis were looking to evaluate the relationship between the number of steps taken per day and all cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality.

The results indicate that as little as 4000 steps/day are needed to significantly reduce all cause mortality and even fewer steps are required for reductions in cardiovascular death.

The analysis, however, demonstrated a strong inverse association between daily step count and all cause and cardiovascular mortality.

In other words, “more is better” for reducing call cause and cardiovascular mortality and is not dependent on age, sex, or the location of where the walking takes place.

This is a schematic from the study showing that each additional 1000 step increment (over about 4000 daily steps) decreases all cause mortality by 15%.  Each 500 step increment (over that same 4000 daily steps) decreases cardiovascular mortality by 7%.

So if you increase your step count you decrease all cause and cardiovascular mortality.

Seems like 10,000 is a worthy daily dose to me.

The lead author of the meta-analysis was interviewed and suggested that the findings should not undermine those who set a goal of 10,000 steps a day, but can also offer hope to those who are struggling to reach the 10,000 step goal. 

More is better, but anything above 4000 leads to life span benefits.