Science Officially Confirmed That The 10,000 Steps Rule Is Outdated. Here's The New Number To Target.
The new findings suggest that you can actually reap the major health benefits well before you hit 10,000 steps.
Here's what experts say about the 10k number and how this applies to your life.
The idea that you need to log 10,000 steps a day for good health has been health gospel for ages. But as Women's Health previously reported this year, the 10,000-a-day steps goal (which roughly equates to five miles) isn't really based in science. In fact, it's more marketing than anything. But it's a nice, round number, and it's built into most fitness trackers.
Now, a new scientific analysis in The Lancet Public Health officially confirms that this lofty steps count goal isn't actually necessary—and the potential health benefits start to level off well before you reach that point.
If you've been happily clocking 10,000 steps a day and feel like it's working for you, there's no reason to stop. But if that number is intimidating and feels impossible to reach with everything else you've got going on in your life, this study probably has some findings you can use. Here's what the scientific review discovered, plus where experts and trainers recommend you try to land with your new step count goal.
Meet the experts: Albert Matheny, RD, CSCS, co-founder of SoHo Strength Lab; Dani Singer, CPT, founder of Fit2Go Personal Training
What did the new meta review find?
For the review, researchers analyzed data from 88 different studies, looking at how step counts were linked with the risk of developing a slew of health conditions. Overall, the researchers discovered that the risk of developing serious health conditions like cardiovascular disease, dementia, cancer, type 2 diabetes, and depression was lower in people who logged 7,000 steps a day compared to those who only did 2,000 daily steps.
But they also discovered that the health perks beyond 7,000 steps were actually pretty minimal.
"Although 10,000 steps per day, an unofficial target for decades without a clear evidence base, was associated with substantially lower risks for all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease incidence, cancer mortality, dementia, and depressive symptoms than 7,000 steps per day, the incremental improvement beyond 7,000 steps per day was small, and there was no statistical difference between 7,000 steps per day and a higher step count for all the other outcomes," the investigators wrote. "Therefore, 7,000 steps per day might be a more realistic and achievable recommendation for some, but 10,000 steps per day can still be a viable target for those who are more active.'
Where did the 10,000 number come from?
The famous steps goal number has a long history behind it (you can do a deep dive here). But here's a quick recap: This number was formulated by a Tokyo doctor named Iwao Ohya who created a fitness tracker called Manpo-Kei (in Japanese, that means "10,000 step meter) with engineer Jiro Kato.
It's been suggested that 10,000 steps was chosen because the Japanese character for 10,000 looks like a man running or walking, but it's not really clear if that's truly one of the reasons behind the number. (Both inventors have since died.)
The number 10,000 eventually got picked up by researchers and fitness tracker developers, and its popularity spread. These days, almost everyone knows the number. Still, "no clinical data backed it then, and none was added later," says Dani Singer, CPT, founder of Fit2Go Personal Training.
Why is it not accurate?
While hitting 10,000 steps isn't bad for you (and means you're moving a lot throughout the day) the exact number is pretty much made up. "It was a marketing campaign,' says Albert Matheny, RD, CSCS, co-founder of SoHo Strength Lab. 'There wasn't a scientific basis for it.'
Matheny stresses that the 10,000 steps a day goal isn't necessarily inaccurate from a health POV—but many people can get serious health perks between 5,000 to 7,000 steps a day. "The data show health gains level off well before 10,000," Singer says. "Mortality and cardiovascular risk improvements start at just 2,000. It's important to understand this so that you avoid an all-or-nothing mindset—especially one that isn't based on any actual data."
If that's the number you like, and you hit it consistently, stick with it! But just remember: '10,000 steps per day is not the magic number," per Matheny.
So, how many steps should I take per day?
Based on the scientific review's findings, aiming for 5,000 to 7,000 steps a day is a good goal to reach for. That's roughly two to 3.5 miles per day, depending on your stride. 'There's nothing wrong with 10,000 steps, but it isn't based in science,' Matheny says.
If you want to still aim for 10,000 steps, Matheny says you should go for it. 'If you don't get there, maybe you still get to 7,000,' he points out. But any amount of walking is helpful. 'A thousand steps is way better than zero,' Matheny says.
You Might Also Like
Jennifer Garner Swears By This Retinol Eye Cream
These New Kicks Will Help You Smash Your Cross-Training Goals
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
7 Major Health Benefits From Walking That *Will* Improve Your Life
The following is an edited and condensed excerpt of Born to Walk: The Broken Promises of the Running Boom and How to Slow Down and Get Healthy – One Step at a Time. Running is more popular than ever – but let's set endurance performance goals aside for a moment and recognise that walking is the quintessential human form of locomotion and the foundation of a healthful, active lifestyle. The health benefits of walking are legion. They accrue with short, frequent walks as well as with long walks and hikes. Any time you have a few minutes to spare, walking is a fantastic way to generate an immediate boost in energy, mood, musculoskeletal health, and cognitive performance. Walking helps boost digestion and the assimilation of nutrients; it is directly associated with improved sleep quality; it helps trigger parasympathetic nervous system activity and thus improves stress management; it improves glucose regulation; it helps boost the production of anabolic hormones such as testosterone, human growth hormone, sex hormone-binding globulin, insulin-like growth factor 1, and DHEA; and it generally promotes homeostasis. Making small shifts in daily routines and habits that enable you to take more daily steps can deliver a phenomenal range of physical and cognitive benefits – especially in the areas listed below. The Health Benefits More Walking Will Bring to Your Life Brain and Cognition The connection between walking and brain health is tremendous. Walking boosts the production of an important protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. BDNF has been shown to help improve neuron firing, build new neurons, increase blood circulation and oxygen delivery, help prevent cognitive decline, alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety, and improve neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to form new connections and pathways. Harvard psychiatrist John J. Ratey, MD, calls BDNF 'Miracle-Gro for the brain'. Furthermore, a brief morning stroll is a reliable way to optimise your circadian rhythm and boost mood-elevating hormones such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. This tees you up for a happy, productive day and sets the stage for the hormonal processes that promote restful sleep at night. When walking becomes a lifelong habit, the hippocampus and other areas of your brain grow thicker, a sign of improved memory formation and consolidation and improved resistance to cognitive decline. A widely publicised 2017 study conducted at UCLA, which compared the MRI scans of active and inactive people over the age of 60, revealed that active folks have bigger, better brains than inactive folks. Study subjects who walked more than 1.8 miles a day have faster brain processing speed, better working memory for quick decisions, and better memory consolidation than inactive folks. The bilateral hippocampal volume in the active group was 12% more than that of the less active group. In his book The Real Happy Pill, Swedish researcher Dr Anders Hansen reports that just taking a daily walk can reduce your risk of dementia by 40%. The popular notion that walking helps with creative thinking and problem-solving has been strongly borne out by research. A prominent Stanford University study revealed that walking can increase creative output by an astonishing 60%. Walking stimulates something called divergent thinking, which allows you to ponder numerous scenarios and solutions in a free-flowing manner. Researchers speculate that walking challenges executive function with the dual task of walking and thinking, which may spur a boost in creativity by 'relaxing inhibitory competition among memories and allowing ideas with low levels of activation to push through.' I can confidently say that I've done some of my best 'writing' on long hikes. Reflecting on my projects from a distance has stimulated fresh ideas and perspectives that I jump on as soon as I return to the keyboard. Mental Health Walking helps alleviate depression symptoms and contributes to improved quality of life scores. A three-phase study published by the American Psychological Association showed that a 12-minute walk delivered a boost in happiness, energy, focus, and self-confidence in comparison to sitting, even when participants weren't interested in walking and had no expectation of such an effect. Walking in nature has particularly potent mental health benefits, as evidenced by the increasing popularity of forest bathing. Strolling through nature has been proved to prompt a reduction in stress hormones, boost immune function, alleviate depressive symptoms, and curb rumination, which is considered destructive behaviour. Doctors are now prescribing forest bathing as a legitimate treatment for a variety of mental and physical health conditions. Fat Metabolism Walking trains your body to efficiently burn free fatty acids for fuel. It's low-intensity, so it uses fat as its predominant energy source, but it is far more metabolically demanding than sitting. Metabolic stimulation from walking and other low-level, purely aerobic activities helps you burn fat 24 hours a day and stabilises mood, energy levels, blood glucose, and appetite. A Harvard University study revealed that an hour a day of brisk walking minimises the influence of obesity-promoting genes. Studies conducted at the University of Exeter showed that a mere 15-minute stroll can reduce both cravings and the intake of chocolate and other sweets. Immune Function Regular walking increases blood circulation, delivers anti-inflammatory benefits, counters the inflammatory effects of sitting, and strengthens your antibodies. Just a few minutes of walking increases the number of immune cells in your leukocytes and boosts white blood cell production, making you more resilient against cold and flu. One study of 1,000 subjects showed a 43% reduction in sick days among those who walked a minimum of 20 minutes a day, five days a week. Disease Prevention Assorted studies reveal that everyday walking can greatly reduce the risk of heart disease and strokes. It can also minimise hospitalisations and the duration of hospital stays, lower blood pressure and resting heart rate, and reduce diabetes risk. A six-year study conducted at the University of North Carolina, involving more than 16,000 women ages 60 and up, revealed a 32% decrease in disease risk among subjects who walked at least 2,000 steps a day. Every increase of 1,000 steps a day was associated with a 28% decrease in mortality risk. Interestingly, the health and disease prevention benefits of walking seem to plateau at 4,500 steps a day. This suggests that we should focus on finding small opportunities to increase daily walking and not get discouraged about falling short of the arbitrary 10,000-step edict. Musculoskeletal Function Walking strengthens muscles, bones, joints, and connective tissue. Walking also builds a foundation that enables you to engage in brief, explosive high-intensity exercise that might otherwise be too difficult for unfit individuals to attempt. Regular walking also helps alleviate arthritis pain and reduces the likelihood of developing arthritis by keeping joints and connective tissue well lubricated. Walking with minimalist footwear and using proper form can help you reorganise faulty biomechanics and become more efficient. This can help you naturally and safely alleviate chronic conditions such as foot and low back pain. Mitochondrial Function Walking may not give you the immediate sense that you're on your way to awesome fitness, but it's an incredibly effective way to increase the number of oxidative enzymes inside your mitochondria. Exercising below fat max heart rate still provides sufficient oxygen to stimulate lots of mitochondria, strengthening them in the process. The oxidative enzymes in your mitochondria improve the metabolic function of your skeletal muscles, boosting fat and carbohydrate metabolism and improving the rate of adenosine triphosphate energy production. Having abundant oxidative enzymes improves performance and provides greater protection against oxidative stress at all exercise intensities. Unlike low-level aerobic exercise, which involves plenty of oxygen and lots of mitochondria, high-intensity exercise will burn glucose without the need to involve mitochondria – this is known as anaerobic metabolism. You're in a hurry (literally!), so you just need some energy – lots of energy – quickly, and you can't go to the trouble to burn energy cleanly and efficiently. Remember the contrasting campfires: the glowing logs of aerobic metabolism and the twigs and newspaper of anaerobic metabolism. When you go anaerobic, you generate ATP more quickly, but you also generate more free radicals, lactic acid, and elevated ammonia levels in the blood because of the disassembling and deamination of cellular proteins. This is why it takes longer to recover from a sprint workout than a walk. Well-functioning mitochondria can help manage the free-radical load resulting from intense exercise by spreading the burden to lots of other mitochondria. Understand that the cellular stress of high-intensity exercise also stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis in its aftermath. However, it does so by lighting up completely different message-signaling pathways from the ones aerobic activity activates. Both low-and high-intensity exercise turn on a 'master switch' called PgC1α, which triggers a favourable rise in mitochondrial density and oxidative enzyme activity. So we have an urgent need to engage in both low-intensity cardio and high-intensity strength and sprint workouts for maximum mitochondrial health. Your exercise patterns are a key driver of mitochondrial health, but diet and other lifestyle factors also exert a big influence. If an unfit, inactive person eats too many carbohydrates, this promotes a pattern of bypassing mitochondria and burning mostly sugar—like an inefficient power plant that burns coal and spews smoke. The same thing happens when you engage in chronic cardio, which can damage mitochondria and promote sugar burning even after you've finished one of those depleting workouts. In these cases, mitochondria can atrophy or become dysfunctional. This makes you prone to oxidative damage not only from exercise stress but also from all forms of life stress. By contrast, a healthy aerobic system turns you into a high-production solar power plant made up of capillaries and mitochondria. It enables mitochondrial biogenesis to occur from anaerobic activity, too. That's right: walking supports your performance and recovery from explosive activity such as sprinting and lifting weights as well as endurance performance at high intensities. You Might Also Like The 23 Best Foods to Build Muscle 10 of the Best Waterproof Boots to Buy in 2019 6 Ways to Improve Your Mental Health
Medscape
8 hours ago
- Medscape
Dementia Diagnosis Takes an Average of 3 Years: New Data
TOPLINE: The average time to diagnosis (TTD) of dementia was 3.5 years in a new meta-analysis, with younger age at onset and having frontotemporal dementia consistently associated with even longer diagnostic intervals. METHODOLOGY: This systematic review and meta-analysis used data from 13 cohort studies published up to December 2024. More than 30,000 patients with a diagnosis of dementia were included, with the age at onset ranging between 54 and 93 years. TTD was defined as the interval between the onset of symptoms, rated by family carers or patients using interviews or medical records, and the final diagnosis. TAKEAWAY: A meta-analysis of 10 studies showed the average TTD across all types of dementia was 3.5 years (95% CI, 2.7-4.3), with moderate-quality evidence. An analysis of six studies showed that the average TTD of young-onset dementia was 4.1 years (95% CI, 3.4-4.9), also with moderate-quality evidence. An analysis by dementia type showed consistently longer TTDs for young-onset Alzheimer's disease (TTD, 4.0 years; 95% CI, 2.7-5.2) and frontotemporal dementia (TTD, 4.7 years; 95% CI, 3.0-6.4). In contrast, TTD in late-onset dementia was 2.9 years (95% CI, 2.6-3.2) in analysis of two studies. IN PRACTICE: 'Timely diagnosis of dementia remains a major global challenge, shaped by a complex set of factors, and specific healthcare strategies are urgently needed to improve it,' lead investigator Vasiliki Orgeta, PhD, Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London, England, said in a press release. 'Clinician training is critical to improve early recognition and referral, along with access to early intervention and individualized support, so that people with dementia and their families can get the help they need,' Orgeta added. SOURCE: The study was published online on July 27 in International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. LIMITATIONS: Definitions of TTD varied across studies, with different methods used to assess the first symptoms of dementia. The current meta-analysis did not assess factors affecting TTD. Additionally, individuals with severe dementia may not have accurately remembered when they first experienced symptoms, potentially introducing a recall bias. The findings were also not applicable to low- and medium-income countries. DISCLOSURES: The investigators reported having no relevant conflicts of interest. This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
Jury rules Meta violated California privacy laws by quietly collecting Flo users' menstrual health data
A California jury has found Meta in violation of state user privacy laws in a class-action suit brought by users of period tracking app, Flo, who alleged that the tech giant collected private menstrual health data without users' consent and used it for ad-tracking purposes. The plaintiffs, claiming to represent millions of Flo users, had accused Flo and Meta of collecting private health data, like their period dates and fertility goals, via Flo's app without permission, therefore violating California Invasion of Privacy Act. Filed in 2021 against Flo, the lawsuit also named Meta, Google, and ad analytics companies AppFlyers and Flurry, as defendants, though Google settled the case in July, and Flo also did so earlier this month. 'This verdict sends a clear message about the protection of digital health data and the responsibilities of Big Tech,' said Michael P. Canty and Carol C. Villegas, lead trial attorneys in the case. 'Companies like Meta that covertly profit from users' most intimate information must be held accountable. Today's outcome reinforces the fundamental right to privacy—especially when it comes to sensitive health data,' they added. Meta disagreed with the verdict and said that the company never eavesdropped on Flo users. 'We vigorously disagree with this outcome and are exploring all legal options. The plaintiffs' claims against Meta are simply false. User privacy is important to Meta, which is why we do not want health or other sensitive information, and why our terms prohibit developers from sending any,' a company spokesperson said in a statement. Last year, Flo raised $200 million in Series C funding from General Atlantic at a valuation of over $1 billion. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
