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Health Benefits of Walking 7000 Steps Daily Confirmed by Study

By: MerxWire

May 01, 2023 at 07:37 AM EDT

Walking at least 7,000 steps per day has been found to lower the risk of death by 50% to 70%, according to a study published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open by the University of Massachusetts.

Contemporary individuals utilize walking as a means to engage in physical activity. (Photo via Unsplash)

Amherst, MA (Merxwire) – Aerobic exercise, such as 333, is a popular method, which involves exercising at least three times per week for a minimum of 30 minutes per session, with a post-workout heart rate of over 130 beats per minute. Even if continuous regular exercise has excellent health benefits, many people still cannot do it or give up exercise. Later, some people started to exercise by walking.

People often hear about 10,000 steps taken every day, but this goal is like an arbitrary number, and it may have come from the Japanese pedometer marketing campaign in 1965. No matter where the source of 10,000 steps a day comes from, Fitbit has included it in daily activity tasks.

How many steps should an adult take every day? Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that middle-aged people who walk at least 7,000 steps a day are 50% to 70% less likely to die in the next ten years compared to those who walk less than 7,000 steps a day.

The study involved 2,110 adults between the ages of 38 and 50 (including Black and White middle-aged women and men) who wore sensors for a week in 2005 and 2006 so that researchers could track their daily steps. During the nearly 11-year follow-up period, 72 participants died, most of which were due to cancer or heart disease.

When analyzing the data, the researchers controlled for obesity, smoking, and other factors that might affect the results. The study found that the more steps people walk each day, the greater the health benefits. Between 7,000 and 10,000 steps, the statistically significant reduction in the risk of death is the largest, but the benefits stabilize after more than 10,000 steps.

The study also found that the risk of death has nothing to do with walking intensity and speed. If two people have the same number of steps, the low-intensity person does not have a higher risk of death than the moderate-intensity person.

“We saw that you can get a lot of benefit from 7,000 steps,” said study author Amanda Paluch, an assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“So really, what we’re seeing is there’s an incremental risk reduction in mortality up to a certain point,” Paluch said. “So for those who are getting, say, 4,000 steps, getting to 5,000 steps could have a benefit and then working your way up.”

According to estimates, a person walks about 5,000 steps in daily life. The federal guidelines show that adults should engage in at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week for substantial health benefits or at least 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week. Some experts who assisted in preparing the guidelines believed that 7,000 to 13,000 steps per day would meet this standard.

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Health Benefits of Walking 7000 Steps Daily Confirmed by Study

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