Walking just 4,000 steps a day can lead to longer life, study finds

10 March 2024 , 19:49

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Those who reach 10,000 steps a day reduce the risk of dying young (Image: Getty Images)

Doing at least 4,000 steps a day can lead to a longer life, according to a new study.

Australian researchers found that every additional step up to around 10,000 steps per day reduces the risk of death and cardiovascular disease (CVD), regardless of how much remaining time is spent sedentary. The University of Sydney team assessed data on 72,174 individuals enrolled in the UK Biobank study - a major biomedical database - who had worn an accelerometer device on their wrist for seven days to measure their physical activity.

The accelerometer data was used to estimate daily step count and time spent sedentary, that is sitting or lying down while awake. The median daily step count for participants was 6,222 steps/day, and 2,200 steps/day was taken as the reference point for assessing the effects of increasing step count.

The median time spent sedentary was 10.6 hours/day, so study participants sedentary for 10.5 hours/day or more were considered to have high sedentary time while those who spent less than 10.5 hours/day sedentary had low sedentary time. Over an average 6.9 years follow up, 1,633 deaths and 6,190 CVD events occurred.

Results, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, show that the optimal number of steps per day to counteract high sedentary time was between 9,000 to 10,000 steps/day. This amount of steps lowered mortality risk by 39 per cent and incident CVD risk by 21 per cent. In both cases, 50 per cent of the benefit was achieved at between 4,000 and 4,500 steps/day.

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The researchers hope that their findings will help to create more accurate recommendations for people's daily step count. Dr Matthew Ahmadi from the Charles Perkins Centre said: "Accruing between 9,000 and 10,000 steps/day optimally lowered the risk of mortality and incident CVD among highly sedentary participants. The minimal threshold associated with substantially lower mortality and CVD risk was between 4,000 and 4,500 steps/day.

"Our prospective results provide relevant findings that can be used to augment public health messaging and inform the first generation of device-based physical activity and sedentary behaviour guidelines, which will likely include specific recommendations on daily stepping."

Isobel Williams