Walking 8k Steps Twice a Week Could Prolong Your Life, Study Finds

https://www.prevention.com/health/a43453914/8000-steps-walking-for-health-study/

by MilnerRoute • 3 years ago

46 60 3 years ago

Doctors: It's really important that you regularly exercise. Get your heart rate up high a few times a week with some sports!

Doctors: Just 10,000 steps of walking every day is fine too!

Doctors: Ok, how about 8,000 steps only once or twice a week. Can you do that?

Doctors: For the love of god, please just get off the couch every once in a while...

farseer• 3 years ago

You joke but perhaps we need to (scientifically) find the minimum number of steps for a reasonable lifespan in tabular form for a given weight, lifestyle, diet, occupation and ethnicity. The law of diminishing returns will apply after a certain amount of physical activity. So will negative consequences of too much exercise where you damage your limbs.

fdsijo• 3 years ago

Worrying about over exercise is like worrying about starting another ice age fighting global warming.

notahacker• 3 years ago

Untangling cause and effect (it clearly works both directions) is near-impossible, the intensity of the steps obviously also matters, and anyone trying to exercise to the statistical minimum before diminishing returns kick in probably has other issues.

I don't think many people need to worry about limb damage from over-walking, and the ones who have already experienced limb damage need to find alternative exercise rather than minmaxing steps...

anonporridge3• 3 years ago

The absolute worse thing you can do for your knees and other joints is be obese. The constant weight and stress wrecks you. This is also why young, fit males come out of the military with wrecked knees, not because of all the running, but because they march around constantly carrying 100+ lb packs, on bodies that would be at a healthy weight of 150lbs.

There's even evidence that distance running strengthens your knees, contrary to common knowledge. https://archive.ph/utsUF

Worrying about too much exercise for the average person is like worrying about drinking too much water on a desert hike.

qayxc• 3 years ago

Isn't that overthinking it big time? Biologically humans have evolved to walk roughly 10-15km a day.

You really have to overdo it to get to negative consequences of light physical activities such as walking. Just talking a one hour walk every day surely doesn't get you anywhere near the red zone, provided you're otherwise reasonably healthy.

comfypotato2• 3 years ago

There’s not much science for the ultramarathon folks, but in general more is better. This talk of negative consequences of too much exercise has no grounding in reality.

fwungy2• 3 years ago

Metabolism is genetic, Diabetes is too. You need to include genetic factors.

MuffinFlavored• 3 years ago

An average person has a stride length of approximately 2.1 to 2.5 feet. That means that it takes over 2,000 steps to walk one mile and 10,000 steps would be almost 5 miles.

mejutoco• 3 years ago

For other readers, about 8km.

lonelygirl15a• 3 years ago

The word “mile” comes from Latin “mille passus”, one thousand paces. A pace was measures from same footfalls: left, left, left.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Historical

jillesvangurp• 3 years ago

It's good advice though. I used to not move around a lot and it was having an impact. These days I build walking into my routine. I walk to work, about 5km. Takes me about 55 minutes. I try to do this several times per week. Sometimes I take public transport or the bike if I'm in a hurry. Usually I walk back as well. And when I'm working from home, I take a walk during lunch break or at the end of the day.

It took the covid lockdowns for me to discover that I actually enjoy this stuff. I put some headphones on and listen some podcasts. I can't focus on a podcast at home or while working. I get distracted or I start doing other things and lose focus. When I walk, I listen. So when I want to listen to a podcast, I just go for a walk now. And if it's a long podcast, I just walk a bit longer.

Anyway, this stuff does seem to work for me. And I don't even mind doing it. Win win.

alpaca1282• 3 years ago

I heard that the reason behind the popular 10k step number was the first step counter on the market which was limited to 9999 steps, and people saw that as a challenge to reach.

Meanwhile this is more like the 5th study I've heard of which talks about some measure of exercise at least 1-2 times a week, like 20+ minutes of cycling.

HopenHeyHi• 3 years ago

Correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adherence_(medicine)

Although the studies I glanced at say something like:

<2000 steps, couch potato, certain doom

2000 greatest reduction in risk

6,000–9,000 steps per day 50% reduced risk of CVD for 60+ year olds <=== you want to get used to this as your baseline to be a healthy silver fox

10k steps, marketing for original pedometer

20k steps, best way to lose weight, almost nobody does this daily :)

Here is a depressing video High School Fitness (1962): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGa6BPj3Mcw

And the easiest one to compare is of course US basic training standards that have gone down each time they have been revised since WWII.

readthenotes1• 3 years ago

Doctors: at the very least, do not sit in the couch, recline. Sitting is very bad for you!

cozzyd2• 3 years ago

I wonder how remote work has impacted the average number of steps per day. I normally get ~5k steps from my commute (walk from home to train, walk from train to office and vice versa) without doing anything else. On days I work from home I'm definitely much more sedentary. Yes I can go on a walk to compensate, but I usually don't...

johnyzee• 3 years ago

Listen to good books while walking.

ericbarrett• 3 years ago

Biggest change for me was going from a city, where there was some walking every day—the train stop, grocery, meetups with friends—to the suburbs. Doesn't matter if it's WFH or commute, in most 'burbs the only required walk is to the garage.

algem2• 3 years ago

Working from home has increased my physical activity. I'm able to go to parks and walking trails near by during breaks. Weight lift during lunch break and since I no longer lose 2 hours a day to commuting I'm able play sports like golf and hockey more frequently, not relying only on weekends to do these sports is amazing. Golf more because I am available more during day light time and hockey more because I am able to get other things done which frees up my night time.

fifilura2• 3 years ago

WFH allowed me to get a dog.

That made me start running every day.

I am now on day 240 of my daily run streak (https://www.runeveryday.com/)

wiredfool• 3 years ago

Dogs are an excellent reminder to get off your butt twice a day.

SamPatt3• 3 years ago

Nice work! Keep it up, you're well on your way.

Sounds like fun but I don't know if I could stay motivated in the winter.

ryanschneider• 3 years ago

I highly recommend “walking to lunch”. Assuming you eat at home just pick a certain location nearby to walk to and back either before or after you eat, tying it to lunch made it more reliable, at least for me. I don’t do it anymore now that I have the habit down and walk plenty every day but it really helped me get started.

morkalork• 3 years ago

My wife is working in healthcare and I'm working from home and we go for walks during lunch before she heads out for the evening shift. Not only am I getting up and moving around, we're spending more meaningful time together. If I was commuting to an office every morning, we would hardly see each other during the week.

rsynnott• 3 years ago

During the pandemic era, I deliberately went for a one to two hour walk to nowhere in particular every evening after work for precisely this reason (at the height of the restrictions in Ireland, you had to stay within 2km of home, so I went in circles). Honestly it's about all that kept me going.

knallfrosch• 3 years ago

People move around way less.

There's a vocal group though, that will tell you how – finally – they're able to hit the gym four times a week.

It's less, but people think it's more. It might be true for some, some of the time for some months, but of course movement will decrease.

cozzyd2• 3 years ago

There probably should be data on this from Fitbit or something, no? Obviously biasd from the type of person who has a Fitbit but maybe Google or apple has less biased surveillance data...

algem2• 3 years ago

You have a pretty pessimistic view. Regardless of WFH or going to office you need to make a conscious effort to move more.

BigCryo2• 3 years ago

Ain't going to help ...you're going to die anyway.. so best you just move to Brazil and travel to the Amazon River and build a raft and live on it and catch fish and pick fruit and stare up at the stars every night till you get old and decrepit and wonder at the marvelous universe that you were born in until one day you see no more and you feel no more and you are no more.. instead of just striving and working out and stepping steps and earning and working and working and earning.. just my thoughts.. but you do you

rayrey• 3 years ago

Probably get killed by a poacher or illegal gold miner.

tiedieconderoga2• 3 years ago

If you don't mind me asking, why don't you do that?

If you already are, what are the rates like for Starlink's jungle-rafting plan?

BigCryo2• 3 years ago

Because I believe that in my essence I am essentially just information contained in my brain.. and I believe that if such information can be sufficiently preserved for a sufficiently long period of time, then I believe that such information can be recovered in sufficient quantities so that the person that I am can be revived or live again some other means or ways.. that might mean immortality for me because information could be considered immortal.. therefore I signed up for cryonics, the practice of freezing the brain after death so that the brain can be preserved for long periods of time in order for some revival to take place in the distant future.. if there were no such thing as cryonics, I would be floating on a raft in the Amazon right now, because there really isn't much point to all this other stuff in my opinion

dvzk• 3 years ago

If anyone thinks this, I sincerely hope you re-evaluate. The difference between doing sports and exercise and doing none is often being disabled or in pain in your 30s and 40s, versus being in near peak physical shape. I meet too many people who assume that debilitation comes with being aged 38-50.

zerr• 3 years ago

By the tiny fraction of the time you've spent/wasted walking? :)

eminence322• 3 years ago

Recently a got fairly basic, but fully functional smart/sports watch. It counts steps, heart rate, "intensity minutes", distance, GPS, etc.

I got it because I was hoping that having a neat gadget to track this stuff would help motivate me to get in those extra exercise minutes. It turns out that it works for me. Seeing the distance/step numbers go up satisfies the little "make graph go up" gremlin in my brain.

anonporridge3• 3 years ago

I'm getting this effect even better now with smartwatch tracked runs and activities uploaded of Strava, which has a premium feature that tracks a "fitness score" alongside with a fatigue score, based on the intensity of the workouts you record. https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216918477-Fitne...

It's really motivating to see that number go up, or at least maintain it and build more area under the curve.

The Strava social component is also motivating because it adds some accountability with friends seeing and liking your workouts, and then noticing if you stop.

alpaca1282• 3 years ago

It can definitely be motivating, though some features are more "one size fits all", like the intensity minute counter. I know a person who gets maybe one intensity minute per week when it should be 300+, simply because the heart rate is lower on average than the manufacturer expects. Meanwhile my count is usually doubled because it counts very intense minutes twice and 99% of the time I exceed the seemingly hardcoded threshold while doing sports.

eminence322• 3 years ago

Mine fortunately has an "automatic" mode for determining those thresholds, as well a way to manually configure the thresholds (which sounds like it would be useful for the two cases you mentioned)

SamPatt3• 3 years ago

Even better than the step count is the resting heart rate.

Mine went from mid 60s down to upper 40s within 6 months of getting my fitbit.

I started hiking regularly, and seeing that number drop consistently felt rewarding.

I did this when unemployed and hiked Arizona mountains almost daily, so this probably isn't typical, but it was part of a lifestyle shift towards fitness which has been wonderful.

lumb63• 3 years ago

This just in: the human body, after billions of years of evolving to be a active, walking organism, is not well suited to a sedentary, seated lifestyle.

Seriously, why would we expect the sedentary, monotonous life of office jobs or being couch potatoes to be good for us? This study only looks at duration of life, but quality of life is huge, too. Exposure to sunlight, using your body, socialization, and eating real food, all do wonders for our health, physical and mental.

comfypotato2• 3 years ago

This isn’t new information. The standard of 3 MET exercise for 2.5-5 hours a week (16k steps at 2.5 mph is in the middle of that range) has been around for a while. It’s in multiple country’s exercise guidelines, which is about as formal as you can get.

Comprehensive literature review has established that 2.5 hours a week at 3 MET reduces your risk of death by cardiovascular event by 70%, and there’s plenty of evidence for other benefits. The more you spread out the exercise the better.

orcul• 3 years ago

I walk ~ 9k steps every day, 20k during weekends. Besides the physical side, it does wonders for the mental state.

inglor_cz• 3 years ago

Personal experience, N == 1...

For the last 400 days, I walked at least 10 000 steps daily every day - in heat, frost, snow or rain. Sometimes much more, so the total sum exceeds 5 million steps.

My immune system has improved visibly, but all that activity didn't have any measurable effect on my weight, which has fluctuated randomly around the same set point as in the years before.

I wonder whether all the putative health effect stems from the immune system improvement.

fortyseven• 3 years ago

But then you spend that extra time walking instead. Touche.

pl900872• 3 years ago

That's not at all what the study "finds".

It found a correlation between cardiovascular health and walking a certain amount a week. This does not at all suggest causation. I'm not nitpicking here. The most likely reason for this is that people who have a significantly more healthy life style have better cardiovascular health while also happening to move significantly more. Just getting up and walking 8k steps twice a week and otherwise having unhealthy lifestyle of the control group is possibly going to do nothing for your cardiovascular health. Claiming anything else needs much different evidence than the linked study.

Edit: I'm not saying walking is bad for you. That's just as wrong. I'm saying just walking won't do much for you. Get a more healthy lifestyle. Cardiovascular health will follow and you'll notice that 16k steps or something comparable will look small compared to what your active/healthy lifestyle will do.

surfsvammel• 3 years ago

Doesn’t everyone working with science or medicine (be that research, teaching or journalism) learn that causation≠correlation? I don’t get it.

pl900872• 3 years ago

Some people also learn that they need a catchy/clickbaity headline to make money.

exolymph• 3 years ago

Most likely it's a feedback loop that goes both ways. Generally healthy —> activity is easier and more pleasurable —> exercise makes you healthier —> being healthy makes exercise more viscerally rewarding, and so on.

fwungy2• 3 years ago

I've had several fitness trackers that never convinced me I needed to exercise more. But when I paired that with a Constant Glucose Monitor, that made a huge impact.

You don't need to push hard all the time, in fact most of your exercise should be in aerobic mode, very little in anaerobic high bpm range. Getting 45 minutes of moderate movement 4-5x/week will improve your glucose management.

This is important because poor glucose management is a root cause of deterioration. Diabetics are the extreme example, but wild glucose swings are also causing deterioration in non-diabetics.

theodric• 3 years ago

I'd rather die

fsckboy• 3 years ago

does "Walking 8k Steps Twice a Week Prolong Your Life" by more net time than it takes to walk 8K steps? cuz I'm not looking to have the part of my life spent not step walking reduced just so I can spend more time walking steps.

Walking 8k Steps Twice a Week Could Prolong Your Life, Study Finds

Related Stories