Study shows walking fewer than 5,000 steps, lower risk of death

UNITED STATES: study suggests that one needs to walk fewer steps per day than previously believed to start experiencing health advantages. The research, released in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, found that walking 2337 steps a day cut the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease in half and that walking at least 3967 steps a day started to lower the risk of dying from any cause.

However, a recent review of 226,889 participants from 17 different research conducted all over the world revealed that the health advantages increase with the amount of walking. With every 500 to 1000 more steps you take, your chance of dying from any cause or from cardiovascular disease is dramatically reduced. Researchers at the Medical University of Lodz in Poland and the Ciccarone Centre for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, led by Maciej Banach, found that the health advantages increased even if people took as many as 20,000 steps each day. They haven't yet discovered an upper bound.

"Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better," said Prof. Banach. "We found that this applied to both men and women, irrespective of age, and irrespective of whether you live in a temperate, sub-tropical or sub-polar region of the world, or a region with a mixture of climates. In addition, our analysis indicates that as little as 4,000 steps a day are needed to significantly reduce deaths from any cause, and even fewer to reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease."

Strong data suggests that living a sedentary lifestyle may raise the risk of cardiovascular disease and shorten lifespan. More than a quarter of the world's population suffers from inadequate physical exercise, according to studies. There are more women than males, and individuals in wealthy nations engage in less physical exercise than those in developing nations. With 3.2 million deaths annually attributed to physical inactivity, the World Health Organisation lists inadequate physical activity as the fourth most common cause of mortality worldwide. Physical activity levels declined as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic and have not recovered two years later.

Dr Ibadete Bytyçi from the University Clinical Centre of Kosovo, Pristina, Kosovo, senior author of the paper, said, "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. 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." This meta-analysis is the first not only to assess the effect of walking up to 20,000 steps a day, but also to look at whether there are any differences depending on age, sex or where in the world people live.

In people aged 60 years or older, the size of the reduction in risk of death was smaller than that seen in people aged younger than 60 years. Prof. Banach said, "In a world where we have more and more advanced drugs to target specific conditions such as cardiovascular disease, I believe we should always emphasise that lifestyle changes, including diet and exercise, which was a main hero of our analysis, might be at least as, or even more effective in reducing cardiovascular risk and prolonging lives.

"We still need good studies to investigate whether these benefits may exist for intensive types of exertion, such as marathon running and iron man challenges, and in different populations of different ages, and with different associated health problems. However, it seems that, as with pharmacological treatments, we should always think about personalising lifestyle changes."