4,000 daily steps is enough to reduce risk of death: study

If you’re not meeting your goal of 10,000 steps per day, don’t sweat it.

The number of steps a person needs to walk every day in order to see health benefits is lower than previously thought, a new study suggests.

The study, published Wednesday in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, found that at least 3,967 steps a day reduced the risk of dying from any cause, while 2,337 steps a day reduced the risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases.

“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,” lead author Maciej Banach, professor of cardiology at the Medical University of Lodz and adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, said in a release.

Researchers analyzed 226,889 people from 17 different studies around the globe, making this the world’s largest study to investigate the matter.

This analysis is the first to assess the effect of walking up to 20,000 daily steps, as well as looking at potential contributing factors such as age, sex or living location.

However, the analysis found that — despite needing just under 4,000 steps to reap advantages — the more you walk, the greater the health benefits.

With every 500 to 1,000 extra steps taken, the risk of death decreases significantly. A 1,000-step increase was linked with a 15% decrease in the risk of dying from any cause, and a 500-step increase was linked with a 7% reduction in fatal cardiovascular disease.

“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 in Pristina and senior author of the paper, said.

The health benefits continue to increase the more you walk, although researchers have yet to find the ceiling limit.

People aged 60 or older had a smaller decrease in death compared to those younger than 60. For other adults, there was a 42% decrease in risk of death for those who walked between 6,000 and 10,000 steps a day and a 49% reduction for younger adults who walked between 7,000 and 13,000 steps a day.

“Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better,” Banach said. “We found that this applied to both men and women, irrespective of age, and irrespective of whether you live in a temperate, subtropical or sub-polar region of the world, or a region with a mixture of climates.”

Studies have provided strong evidence that living a sedentary lifestyle could lead to a greater risk of cardiovascular disease and a shorter life. Research has revealed that more than a quarter of the world’s population is affected by insufficient physical activity, with more men than women and more people in higher-income countries compared to low-income countries not getting enough.

According to the World Health Organization, insufficient physical activity is the fourth leading risk factor for death. About 3.2 million deaths every year are due to not enough physical activity.

“In a world where we have more and more advanced drugs to target specific conditions such as cardiovascular disease, I believe we should always emphasize 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,” Banach said.

Physical activity levels also majorly decreased while people were mostly sitting at home at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they still haven’t gotten that number back to where it was.

A study earlier this year published in JAMA Network Open looked at steps taken by nearly 5,500 participants and found that steps counted between Jan. 1, 2018, through Jan. 31, 2020, were considered pre-COVID, while steps after that date through the end of 2021 were considered post-COVID.

However, the researchers noted that further studies would need to be done with a larger pool of subjects in order to get more data on higher daily step counts.

“I should emphasize 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,” Bytyçi said.

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

A study from May published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology suggested that eating five pieces of fruits and vegetables every day can be as beneficial to your physical fitness as taking 4,000 steps.

This number of just slightly less than 4,000 steps is lower than what people are used to seeing as a goal.

A September 2022 study found that 10,000 steps every day might help reduce the risk of death from cardiovascular disease, cancer and death from any cause.

That magical number of steps has been linked to a wide variety of health benefits, such as weight loss and lowered risks of cancer, dementia and heart disease — but it turns out to be a myth stemming from no research or evidence.

It was reported last year that the number was actually a Japanese marketing ploy with little scientific basis.

One major study released in March 2022 also debunked the goal, suggesting that anywhere between 6,000 and 8,000 steps a day is just enough, and anything more than 8,000 doesn’t actually count in terms of health benefits.