The more steps you take, the greater the impact on your overall health, researchers behind a new study have found.
ADVERTISEMENTWalking as few as 4,000 steps per day can reduce a person’s risk of death and just under 2,500 steps per day can reduce someone’s risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
That’s according to a new analysis of nearly 227,000 people from 17 different studies published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology on Wednesday.
While regular physical activity has long been shown to improve both mental and physical health, the study shows that the number of steps needed to start having health benefits was lower than previously thought.
The researchers led by Maciej Banach, professor of cardiology at the Medical University of Lodz, Poland, found that there were greater health benefits as people increased their number of steps.
Increasing someone's daily steps by 500 a day was associated with a 7 per cent reduction in dying from cardiovascular disease while an increase of 1,000 steps was associated with a 15 per cent reduction in the risk of dying from any cause.
Health benefits continued to increase for people walking as many as 20,000 steps per day.
“The critically important message is that if you cannot be so active due to different reasons, your capabilities, due to the time of your work… please start even with the low moderate exercises,” Banach told Euronews Next.
Significant health benefits
"With a low number of steps around 4,000, even then you might observe significant health benefits and significant reduction of mortality, but it is important to start early," Banach said.
The researchers found that the largest risk reduction for people under the age of 60 is around 7,000-13,000 per day whereas for older adults, it was between 6,000-10,000 steps.
“Do not worry if you are not active enough, taking into count the number of steps you are doing, try to improve yourself with the number of steps because it is associated with additional health benefits. Try to start as early as possible, because the earlier you start, the better the effects,” Banach added.
Research has shown that regular physical activity can improve health, prevent heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and cancer, and reduce the risk of premature death.
But the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that globally, one in four adults does not meet their recommendations for physical activity. The organisation recommends 2.5 to 5 hours of physical activity per week for adults.
“Until now, it’s not been clear what is the optimal number of steps, both in terms of the cut-off points over which we can start to see health benefits, and the upper limit, if any, and the role this plays in people’s health,” Dr Ibadete Bytyçi from the University Clinical Centre of Kosovo, Pristina who was also a senior author on the paper, said in a statement.
“However, I should emphasise that there were limited data available on step counts up to 20,000 a day, and so these results need to be confirmed in larger groups of people”.
The study was an observational analysis that showed an association between a person’s number of steps and a reduction in the risk of death rather than a causal link.
Notably, the researchers did not find a difference between men and women nor based on where people live.
“Our results may be used to promote public awareness of the importance of physical activity, particularly in the easily implementable activity of walking,” the study authors wrote in conclusion.
