What is the real number of steps you have to take per day for a healthy life

When it comes to exercise, there is no magic number, but that does not mean that numbers are not important in this area.

As for walking, the figure we generally refer to is 10,000 – as the daily number we have to go through to stay healthy. There is also a lot of evidence to support this, such as studies in recent years that show that as we go further the risk of premature death decreases.

However, researchers continue to make new discoveries, and in one of the latest research, a team from the University of Massachusetts followed a cohort of more than 2,000 people from several American cities to generate new conclusions. The group with an average age of 45 years old wore accelerometers that measured their daily number of steps and intensity while walking.

The experiment began in 2005, and participants were monitored at regular intervals until 2018. The observational nature of the study may give us some conclusions about the relationship between physical activity and the health of research participants.

Thus, the researchers concluded that people who walked at least 7,000 steps a day had a 50-70% lower risk of premature death. Increasing the daily number of steps in less active people could provide a major protection against the evolution of mortality, but after a certain threshold it seems, however, that the additional number of steps did not have major beneficial effects. “More than 10,000 steps a day is not a number associated with greater reductions in the risk of mortality,” said experts.

It seems, therefore, that we can discuss a new threshold that has an influence on our health, that of 7,000 steps, which seems a little easier to reach. “7,000 steps could be a great goal for individuals who are not active enough to reach this number.”