How many steps per day do you have the lowest all-cause mortality?

(Dust 4x/figure)

Compared with all kinds of physical exercise activities that require equipment assistance and coach guidance, walking can be described as a safer, environmentally friendly and low-threshold way of exercise, but it is precisely this simplest and most common exercise method, how much to walk, how to grasp the intensity and other issues, has been lacking enough scientific evidence.

Recently, a joint study by multinational scientists showed that from the perspective of the health indicator of all-cause mortality, walking 8,000 steps per day may be a highly healthy amount of walking exercise for adults of all ages, and the related all-cause mortality rate is greatly reduced.

All-cause mortality refers to the overall picture of mortality due to various causes. Specifically, for adults under the age of 60, the more they walk each day, the lower the all-cause mortality rate, and when they walk about 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day, the corresponding all-cause mortality rate drops to a relatively flat trough. Similarly, people aged 60 and older can take 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day to reach the trough of all-cause death. The study was published in March 2022 in The Lancet Public Health.

"Our research shows that the more you walk, the better. And those adults who lack exercise the most have the most room to benefit. Gradually increasing the amount of walking exercise may have health benefits. Especially for adults who find extending their workout time challenging for themselves, monitoring the number of steps they take throughout the day and figuring out how many more steps they take may be a good solution. If you can now take 4,000 steps a day, try to get to 5,000 steps, then 6,000 steps, and so on. Amanda E Paluch, an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who led the study, explained to Southern Weekend that even if some people have walked more than 10,000 steps a day in the future or even now, they can continue to hold on and not stop, because although the latest study found that people over 60 years old and under, when they walk 6,000 to 8,000 steps and 8,000 to 10,000 steps, respectively, the risk is already lower. But this is not to say that going more is harmful, but only that in reducing the risk of death, the return is decreasing relative to the effort.

The relationship between these walks and risks is based on a comprehensive analysis of relevant long-term follow-up studies. Among them, the earliest study began in 1999, including a total of more than 47,000 adult walking and death data, and more than 3,000 deaths were recorded in the median follow-up period of nearly 7 years. The researchers quantified their risk of death by analyzing the deaths of people with different amounts of walking. If these people are divided into four intervals in order of the number of steps walked per day from low to high, the first quarter of the people walk the least, the median number of steps is only more than 3500 steps per day, the second and third quarter of the population, the median number of steps reached more than 5800 steps and 7800 steps, respectively, and the last quarter of the people who walked the most walked, the median walked more than 10900 steps per day. If the mortality rate of the top quartile of people with the fewest steps is taken as the benchmark, the adjusted risk of death for the second to fourth quarter is only 0.60, 0.55 and 0.47, respectively, which is equivalent to reducing the risk by 40% to 53%. That is to say, in terms of walking alone, people who walk a little more have a nearly half risk of death. Corresponding to the specific number of steps, regardless of age, about 8,000 steps can greatly reduce the risk of death to a lower level.

And such conclusions are not isolated. Similar findings were made in a smaller study of more than 2,000 participants published in the Journal of the American Medical Association JAMA Network Open in September 2021. After an average of nearly 10 years of follow-up with the group of middle-aged people with an average age of about 45, the researchers found that the risk of death was 50 to 70 percent lower than those who walked less than 7,000 steps a day and walked at least 7,000 steps a day.

Just moving can be good for your health, which is exactly the concept conveyed in the latest exercise guidelines of the World Health Organization. Based on a large number of long-term research data, experts have found that the harm of sedentary is very large, and the risk of death can be 263% higher than that of those who exercise the most and spend the shortest time sedentary, and those who exercise the least and have the longest sedentary time. Thus, in 2020, the World Health Organization continued to advocate in its guidelines that adults should perform 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise per week, or 75 to 150 minutes of strenuous aerobic exercise, or combine the two intensities to achieve the overall required amount of exercise. And as long as you move, no matter how long the single time is, you can count it into this overall exercise time.

So the question is, can walking really count as exercise? Does it work if the intensity is low? "Our study found that no matter how intense the walking, the risk of death was lower. Thus, walking at lower intensity may help reduce mortality. If you want to get out of moderate intensity, then the heart rate will be slightly improved, a quicker criterion is to do a conversation test, moderate intensity walking means that you can talk while walking, but you can't sing. Amanda Paruch told Southern Weekend, "Walking is a good representation of the general level of activity, which most people can do, and can be integrated into people's daily lifestyles, helping people move more and sit less during the day." At the same time, counting how many steps you take each day is a simple and feasible way to monitor and help increase exercise, especially given the growing popularity of fitness trackers and mobile devices. ”

Amanda Paruch suggested that in life, you can find ways to increase your steps, such as taking more stairs, parking your car farther, increasing your walking distance, having some walking meetings while walking and talking at work, and so on. Of course, walking is good, but it's not a panacea. If you want to improve your health benefits more, you also need to combine other aerobic exercises, such as twice a weekly muscle strengthening training, using weight lifting equipment and resistance bands, or if you don't want to use equipment, doing squats, push-ups, or even doing some physical work. The elderly should pay special attention to joining some activities to exercise balance ability, practicing yoga, playing tai chi, reducing the risk of falls, and if you want to increase the number of steps, you can also accompany your grandchildren to do more games.

Of course, it should be noted that although the latest research has established a quantitative correlation between the number of steps and the mortality rate, the observational study cannot directly derive the causal relationship, and the data of the relevant long-term studies are basically from developed countries, mostly white, and the data have certain limitations, so the results are for reference only. In the absence of a corresponding reliable guide to walking exercise, these findings focus on highlighting the importance of walking for life and health. More research is needed in the future to enrich the association between walking and other common diseases, and to accumulate more scientific evidence for the introduction of walking guidelines.

At present, mobile phones, bracelets and watches and other electronic devices, generally have the function of calculating the number of steps, although the step counting method is not necessarily consistent, but it can roughly reflect the number of steps in a day and the number of steps in a week. According to the latest research, reducing sitting, walking more, and walking 8,000 steps a day, even if you don't specifically schedule your running and fitness time, is likely to have significant benefits for your long-term health. Of course, increasing the intensity and duration of your workouts generally has additional health gains.

Southern Weekend reporter Wang Jiangtao