Walking 4,000 Steps Daily Reduces the Risk of Death

Walking 4,000 steps per day can reduce your chance of death from any cause, revealed a recent study, the most comprehensive to date. The exciting aspect is that the more you walk, the bigger the health advantages. For years, it has been unclear how many steps we should strive for or if the rewards we can reap are limited. Even with relatively little activity, the researchers discovered that persons who walk at least 4,000 steps each day have improved cardiovascular health.

Daily Walks Can Reduce Mortality Risks

They examined data from 17 previous research including a whopping 2,26,889 people and tracked their journey for an average of seven years to determine the influence of varying daily step counts on health.

The findings, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, revealed that walking 3,967 steps per day reduces the chance of death from any cause (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
The association between daily step count and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality: a meta-analysis

Go to source).

Surprisingly, walking just 2,337 steps per day can significantly reduce the risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease. Every additional 1,000 steps reduce the risk of dying from any cause by 15%, whereas just 500 extra steps reduce cardiovascular disease-related mortality by 7%.

Maciej Banach, a professor of cardiology at the Medical University of Lodz in Poland, said, "Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better. 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."

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), insufficient physical exercise is the fourth leading cause of death in the world, accounting for nearly 3.2 million deaths per year (2^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Physical inactivity

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Tailoring Daily Steps for Different Age Groups

Meanwhile, the ideal range for persons aged 60 and up is between 6,000 and 10,000 steps each day. But hold on, there's more! The team also investigated the effects of walking up to 20,000 steps each day, which is similar to traveling 9-10 kilometers.

To their surprise, the health advantages continued to skyrocket, with no evidence of decreasing returns. However, the team warns that evidence on these "high steppers" is still limited, and further research is needed.

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References:

1. The association between daily step count and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality: a meta-analysis - (https://academic.oup.com/eurjpc/advance-article/doi/10.1093/eurjpc/zwad229/7226309)
2. Physical inactivity - (https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr-details/3416)

Source-Medindia