According to the World Health Organization (WHO), you should take at least 10,000 steps a day to fight against a sedentary lifestyle and preserve your health. Other more recent studies have modulated the enthusiasm of the WHO (10,000 steps is still the equivalent of 7.5 km of walking) and calculated that setting a daily goal of 7000 steps would be enough to hope age well. But a new study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, challenges this advice. Indeed, according to researchers from the University of Sydney (Australia), the speed at which you walk is just as important for your health as the number of steps you take.
Brisk walking, the new health gesture
For this study, scientists followed 78,500 people between the ages of 40 and 79 fitted with wearable trackers to objectively track their daily step count. They then compared the figures with their state of health, 7 years later. Only those who were free of cardiovascular disease, cancer, or dementia at baseline and free of disease during the first two years of the study were included in the final assessment.
While step count is easily understood and now widely used to track activity levels, few smartwatch wearers think of stepping up their pace. However, according to this study, a more brisk pace of steps (such as brisk walking) showed health benefits that surpass those provided by the number of steps.
The main conclusions of this study:
- Each 2,000 steps gradually reduces the risk of premature death by 8-11%, up to approximately 10,000 steps per day.
- Similar associations were observed for cardiovascular disease and cancer incidence.
- Taking 9,800 steps per day is linked to a 50% reduced risk of dementia, but the risk is already reduced by 25% with just 3,800 steps per day.
- Step intensity or faster pace showed beneficial associations for all outcomes (dementia, heart disease, cancer, and death) beyond total daily step count.
“The take-home message here is that, for protective health benefits, people could not only ideally aim for 10,000 steps per day, but also aim to walk faster,” said Dr. Matthew Ahmadi, a researcher at the University of Sydney and co-lead author of this study.
Source :Prospective Associations of Daily Step Counts and Intensity With Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease Incidence and Mortality and All-Cause MortalityJama internal medicine, September 2022
