Could walking extend your lifespan? - study

Public health and sports medicine specialists have recommended that people walk 10,000 steps a day to promote good health. But that number doesn’t seem to be holy. The number of steps you should walk every day to start seeing benefits to your health is lower than previously thought, according to the largest analysis ever to investigate this.

The study, just published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found that walking an average of at least 3,967 steps a day started to reduce the risk of dying from any cause, and 2,337 steps a day reduced the risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases.

The new analysis of 226,889 people from 17 different studies around the world has shown that the more you walk, the greater the health benefits. The risk of dying from any cause or from cardiovascular disease decreases significantly with every 500 to 1000 extra steps you walk. An increase of 1,000 steps a day was associated with a 15% reduction in the risk of dying from any cause, while an increase of 500 steps a day was associated with a 7% reduction in dying from heart disease and stroke.

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.

The researchers, led by cardiology Prof. Maciej Banach at the Medical University of Lodz, Poland who is also adjunct professor at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, found that even if people walked as many as 20,000 steps a day, the health benefits continued to increase. They have not found an upper limit yet.

The research, entitled “The association between daily step count and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality: a meta-analysis”, was published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

'The more you walk, the better'

“Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better,” Banach noted. “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 few as 4,000 steps a day are needed to significantly reduce deaths from any cause, and even fewer to reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease.”

There is strong evidence that a sedentary lifestyle can contribute to an increase in cardiovascular disease and a shorter life. Studies have shown that insufficient physical activity affects more than a quarter of the world’s population. More women than men (32% versus 23%), and people in higher income countries compared to low-income countries (37% versus 16%) fail to get an adequate amount of physical activity.

According to World Health Organization (WHO) data, insufficient physical activity is the fourth most frequent cause of death in the world, with 3.2 million deaths a year related to physical inactivity. The COVID-19 pandemic also reduced the amount of people’s physical exercise, and activity levels have not recovered two years after it.

Dr. Ibadete Bytyçi from the University Clinical Center of Kosovo, who was the senior author of the paper, added: “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 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.”

The researchers’ meta-analysis followed up participants for a average of seven years; the average age was 64; and 49% of participants were female.

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. In the older adults, there was a 42% reduction in risk seen in those who walked between 6,000 and 10,000 steps a day, while there was a 49% reduction in risk in younger adults who walked between 7,000 and 13,000 steps a day.

Banach concluded that “in a world where we have more and more advanced drugs to target specific conditions such as cardiovascular disease, I believe we should always stress that lifestyle changes, including diet and exercise 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 – but it seems that, as with pharmacological treatments, we should always think about personalizing lifestyle changes.”