9,000 to 10,500 steps a day significantly reduces mortality, CVD risk

Key takeaways:

• Any daily step count above 2,200 was linked to reduced mortality and CVD risk regardless of sedentary time.
• Half the benefits from the optimal daily step count were achieved with 4,000 to 4,500 daily steps.

Any amount of daily steps above 2,200 offers health benefits, but the step count associated with the lowest mortality and incident CVD risk was between 9,000 to 10,500 a day, research showed.

“This is by no means a get out of jail card for people who are sedentary for excessive periods of time; however, it does hold an important public health message that all movement matters and that people can and should try to offset the health consequences of unavoidable sedentary time by upping their daily step count,” Matthew N. Ahmadi, PhD, a researcher from the University of Sydney, in Australia, said in a press release.

Numerous studies have examined the impact of daily steps on various health outcomes. For example, one study showed that higher daily step counts reduced the risk for multiple chronic conditions, like obesity and sleep apnea.

According to Ahmadi and colleagues, higher daily step counts have also been associated with a reduced risk for mortality and CVD, whereas high daily sedentary time has increased the risks for these outcomes.

“However, the current evidence on daily stepping comes from studies that did not consider whether (and to what extent) the association with mortality and incident CVD was modified or attenuated by levels of sedentary time,” they wrote in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

The researchers analyzed data from 72,174 U.K. Biobank participants (mean age, 61 years; 58% women) who had worn an accelerometer device on their wrist for several days.

The accelerometer data were then used to determine their physical activity and sedentary time.

Over a mean 6.9 years of follow-up, there were 1,633 deaths and 6,190 cases of CVD. The median daily step count for participants was 6,222, whereas the median daily sedentary time was 10.6 hours.

Ahmadi and colleagues found that found that any number of daily steps above 2,200 — a reference point the researchers created based on the step counts in the lowest 5th percentile of all participants — was associated with reduced mortality and incident CVD risks among those with low and high sedentary time.

Compared with 2,200 steps a day, 9,000 to 10,500 daily steps was the optimal range to counteract sedentary time, reducing the risk for mortality and incident CVD by 39% and 21%, respectively.

Additionally, 50% of the health benefits associated with the optimal number of steps were achieved between 4,000 to 4,500 daily steps.

The researchers said they could not determine causality due to the study’s observational design.

“Daily stepping targets are a simple metric clinicians and allied health providers can use to monitor and promote physical activity to their patients,” Ahmadi and colleagues wrote. “Collectively, our findings may have important implications to help improve the efficacy of future trials and the precision of intervention treatments among individuals with varying physical activity and sedentary time levels.”

References:

• Ahmadi M, et al. Br J Sports Med. 2024;doi:10.1136/bjsports-2023-107221.
• Daily step count of 9,000 to 10,000 may counteract risk of death and cardiovascular disease in highly sedentary people. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1036593. Published March 5, 2024. Accessed March 5, 2024.