The number of steps it takes to walk every day to begin experiencing health benefits is fewer than previously thought, reveals the largest study to date on this topic, which has shown that walking at least 3,967 steps a day began to reduce the risk of dying from any cause, while taking 2,337 steps a day lowered the risk of dying from disease of the heart and blood vessels (cardiovascular disease). The results have just been published in European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
The new analysis includes data from 226,889 people from 17 different studies around the world and has also shown that the more you walk, the greater the health benefits. The risk of dying from any cause or from cardiovascular disease decreases significantly with each additional 500 to 1,000 steps taken. An increase of 1,000 steps a day was associated with a 15% reduction in the risk of dying from any cause, and an increase of 500 steps a day was associated with a 7% reduction in death from cardiovascular disease.
The researchers, led by Maciej Banach, a professor of cardiology at the Medical University of Lodz, Poland, and an adjunct professor at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, found that when people walked up to 20,000 steps a day the health benefits continued to increase. They have not yet found an upper limit.
“Lifestyle changes, including diet and exercise, could be at least as effective as drugs, or even more effective, in reducing cardiovascular risk and prolonging life.”
“Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better,” says Professor Banach. “We found that this applied to both men and women, regardless of age and regardless of whether you live in a temperate, subtropical, or subpolar region of the world, or in a region with a mix of climates. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that just 4,000 steps a day to significantly reduce deaths from all causes, and even less to reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease.”
There is strong evidence that a sedentary lifestyle can contribute to an increase in cardiovascular disease and a shorter life. Studies have shown that insufficient physical activity affects more than a quarter of the world’s population. More women than men (32% vs. 23%) and people in higher-income countries compared to low-income countries (37% vs. 16%) do not get a sufficient amount of physical activity.
According to data from the World Health Organization, insufficient physical activity is the fourth most frequent cause of death in the world, with 3.2 million deaths each year related to a sedentary lifestyle. Furthermore, one of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic was a decrease in physical activity, and activity levels have not recovered three years later.
This meta-analysis is the first to not only assess the effect of walking up to 20,000 steps a day, but also to look at whether there are differences based on age, gender, or where people live in the world. The studies analyzed by the researchers followed participants for a median (average) of seven years. The average age of the participants was 64 years and 49% were women.
“Until now it was unclear what the optimal number of steps is, both in terms of the cutoff points above which you can start to see health benefits and the upper limit, if any, and the role this plays in people’s health. However, I must emphasize that there were limited data available on step counts up to 20,000 per day, so these results need to be confirmed in larger groups of people,” said Dr. Ibadete Bytyçi of the Center Kosovo University Clinician, Pristina, Kosovo, lead author of the article.
Personalize lifestyle changes to live longer and better
In people 60 years and older, the magnitude of the reduction in the risk of death was less than that observed in people younger than 60 years. In older adults, a 42% risk reduction was seen in those who walked 6,000 to 10,000 steps per day, while there was a 49% risk reduction in younger adults who walked 7,000 to 13,000 steps per day. .
“In a world where we have increasingly advanced drugs to treat specific conditions like cardiovascular disease, I think we should always emphasize that lifestyle changes, including diet and exercise, which was the main hero of our analysis, could be at least as effective, or even more so, in reducing cardiovascular risk and prolonging life,” said Professor Banach.
“We still need good studies to investigate whether these benefits may exist for types of intensive exertion, such as marathon running and Iron Man challenges, and in different populations of different ages and with different associated health problems. However, it appears that by As with drug treatments, we should always think about personalizing lifestyle changes.”
Strengths of the meta-analysis include its size and that it did not only include studies limited to a maximum of 16,000 steps per day. Among its limitations, it highlights that it is an observational study and, therefore, cannot prove that the increase in the step count causes the reduction in the risk of death, only that it is associated with it. Furthermore, the impact of step counting was not tested in people with different illnesses, as all participants were generally healthy when they entered the studies analyzed. The investigators were also unable to account for differences in race and socioeconomic status, and the methods of counting steps were not identical in all studies included in this meta-analysis.
