Do You Need to Walk 10 Thousand Steps to Stay Fit?

Ever heard of the advice to walk 10,000 steps per day? It turns out that the recommended 10,000 steps per day for health is based more on history than research.

According to Dr I-Min Lee, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health and an expert in step counting and health, the 10,000-step target first became popular in Japan around 1960.

 At that time, a watchmaker wanted to take advantage of the citizens' interest in the importance of the sport after the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games by mass-producing pedometers, which when written in Japanese, resembled people walking.

 The device, also known as the '10,000 step meter', has so far succeeded in instilling the goal of walking 10,000 steps per day in the minds of people around the world and in fitness trackers.

 However, as quoted from the New York Times, currently experts state that walking up to 10,000 steps is not the only way to improve fitness.

 A 2019 study by Dr Lee and his colleagues found that women in their 70s who regularly walked at least 4,400 steps per day reduced their risk of premature death by 40 percent, compared with women who walked 2,700 steps or less. per day.

 The risk of premature death decreased in women who walked more than 5,000 steps per day, but the benefits would not increase even if they could reach 7,500 steps per day.

This means that older women who walk less than half of the 10,000 steps a day tend to live longer than those who walk less often.

 Another study conducted in 2020 of nearly 5,000 middle-aged men and women of various ethnicities, found that 10,000 steps per day is not a prerequisite for longevity.

 In the study, people who walked about 8,000 steps per day were more likely to die prematurely from heart disease or other causes than people who walked 4,000 steps a day.

 However, there is nothing wrong if a person walks more than 10,000 steps per day. However, the more steps when walking, does not mean it will provide more benefits as well, including protection against premature death.

 Another popular study conducted in Ghent, Belgium in 2005 that examined a one-year sample of walking 10,000 steps per day found that only about eight percent of the sample had reached the daily goal by the end of the study.

 Even so, Dr Lee emphasized, there is nothing wrong if someone has a goal to walk how many thousand steps a day. However, the recommended physical activity by the US Government or other countries is to exercise at least 150 minutes per week or 30 minutes per day.

 If calculated in terms of the number of steps walked each day, then 150 minutes of exercise per week is equivalent to walking about 16,000 steps per week or 2,000-3,000 steps per day.