In a poll conducted by YouGov in 2017 they asked 2,198 adults how much they walked. 52% of people said they walked less than a mile a day- that’s around 2,000 steps!
I think most of us know that walking has the potential to help our health in some way or another and the research backs this up. In an Instagram post we did a few weeks ago I talked about the benefits of walking.
When I talk to people about physical activity and exercise people often say say they are trying to up their step count and are aiming to walk 10,000 steps a day as they think that this is good for their health. As a physio I often get asked if this is accurate. So I thought I’d do a bit of digging into the research to find out whether walking 10,000 steps a day actually has some evidence behind it when it comes to looking after our health and….what the research really says about how much walking we should do.
Where did 10,000 steps figure originally come from?
It was actually a marketing campaign back in the ‘60’s. A Japanese company Yamasa Tokei produced the first commercially available pedometer and called it Manpo-Kei, which when translated means ’10,000 step meter’. The company just picked the name because it sounded good – there was no research behind it!
What a fantastic piece of marketing as now this has been establish as a rule when it comes to how much walking we should do for health.
Is doing 10,000 steps helpful then?
In this study in 2017 they looked at all the evidence behind aiming for 10,000 steps and found that this level of activity did help to lower blood pressure and maintained bone mineral density in adults between 49-64 (which is especially important to women as we are more susceptible to thinning of the bone structure (osteoporosis) in menopause). It also increased high- density lipoprotein (often called the ‘good cholesterol’) and lowered ‘bad cholesterol’ low-density lipoprotein.
In this study (which took place in 2020) they found that a greater number of steps (between 8,000 to 12,000) was associated with lowering all-cause mortality (this just means dying from any cause) compared with those who took 4,000 steps. Interestingly it didn’t find an association between step intensity (how strenuous it was) and mortality.
This large study on 16,741 women found that 4440 steps a day lowered mortality rate compared to those who averaged 2700 step a day. They also found that the more steps people did (up to about 7500) the more the mortality rate decreased.
There is also evidence that aiming for 7,000-8,000 steps a day would be sufficient to achieve the international guidelines of doing 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise a week in support of health. However this probably needs to be done over the habitual- day to day activity that we do.
Is it just the taking part that helps?
Interestingly this study suggested that it actually may be the ‘taking part in the activity’, rather than the number its self that gave the benefits. They found that those who did a 100 day 10,000 step challenge showed some ‘modest, yet important improvements in mental health’. Researches have found that women who walked 7,500 steps and men that walked 12,500 steps a day had a 50% lower prevalence of depression compared with those who walked under 5,000 steps a day.
Walking and weight loss.
We could write this blog without talking about weight loss (after all we are here to provide the evidence behind this) so let’s talk about walking and weight loss.
To start with most of the studies only follow people for a year and as we know weight loss is difficult to maintain over longer periods of time- have a look at our video if you want to understand this a little more.
In one of the studies I looked at they found that people who walked 10,000 steps daily lost (wait for it)………..2.4kg over a 36 week period! and in this meta analysis (this means that researchers pull together all the research on a subject) it was 1.27kg, although the studies looked at varied in length from 4 weeks to 1 year so it is difficult to draw conclusions from this.
It’s not surprising that it is a relatively small amount when you consider our evolution.
When you think of your ancestors (I don’t mean your great grandmother, I mean really far back to when we were evolving from our chimp like ancestors) we were hunter gatherers. We had to walk for miles in search of food. We wouldn’t have survived very long if we used all our energy up by walking in the pursuit of the next meal- the body wouldn’t have any energy left to do all its other functions (digesting, repairing etc.). So over time walking has become very energy efficient.
In fact, it has been suggested that one of the reasons we evolved to walk on two limbs rather than 4 was because it is more energy efficient. According to this article in New Scientist in 2007 walking upright saves us up to 25% more energy than walking on all fours.
Our bodies learn to compensate from any physical activity we do to make sure we have enough energy to find the next meal. We talk about this a little more in our videos that you can watch (or listen to) click here if you would like to learn more on this.
One thing to bear in mind when reading anything about walking and weight loss is this piece of research that showed how some types of pedometers can be inaccurate on people with larger bodies.
What happens if I can’t do 10,000 steps?
It’s hard not to deny that the message of walking for health (or health in general) is steeped in ableism and it is recognised that there is a gap in the research about how to advise people living with long term conditions to become physically active. But what we do know is that every step you do take will be contributing some way.
Exercise rules and numbers to aim for can be helpful.
If you are not sure how many steps you take, then measuring your step count might be a way to increase your awareness of how active you really are. You can then decide what you want to do next.
If you notice that it is low you could increase it by doing simple things e.g. meeting a friend for a walk, walking at lunch time, going up and down the stairs a few more times or walking to your local shops.
Having this number can be helpful for some as it does give us something to aim for. 10,000 steps is a nice round number that’s easy to remember, and if you find measuring your step each day keeps you moving your body then don’t stop. The trouble is with using an external number to aim for it doesn’t allow us to listen to what our body and mind needs at that moment in time.
So, should I aim for a step count each day?
Walking is absolutely good for our physical health, and it looks like the research is saying we don’t have to reach 10,000 steps to gain those benefits. It appears doing 7,500- to 12,000 seems to be an optimal figure for supporting health. BUT doing something is always better that doing nothing. If you find measuring your steps each day keeps you moving your body then don’t stop.
However…..
if you find you spend so much physical and mental effort trying to reach it and beat yourself up if you don’t- we have to ask, is it really a ‘healthy’ thing to do?
Of course you could lower the step count you are aiming for, remembering anything is better than nothing, or you could just remember that taking every opportunity to move your body, notice how it feels after and the overall difference it makes to your everyday life may be a healthier way to measure your activity. It’s all about what works for you physical AND mental health.
What ever you decide to do- remember to have fun!
The Curvy Wellness Company 