Do I have to walk 10,000 steps a day for real health?[카드뉴스]

Fitness devices often recommend that we walk 10,000 steps. However, the goal of “10,000 steps” can be seen as a result of chance and history rather than science.

According to Dr. I-Min Lee, a professor and health expert at Harvard University, ‘10,000 Bo’ began to become popular in Japan in the 1960s. And to capitalize on the growing interest in fitness after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a watchmaker mass-produced pedometers. As the ‘pedometer’ took its place in this way, the ‘pedometer’ became imprinted as a goal in our minds as well.

But today’s science tells us that you don’t need to walk 10,000 steps a day for health and longevity. In 2019, Dr. Lee and colleagues found that women in their 70s who walked about 4,400 steps per day reduced their risk of premature death by 40% compared to women who walked less than 2,700 steps per day. Even walking more than 5,000 steps a day lowered the risk of premature death, but walking more steps lowered the risk of death by up to 7,500 steps a day. This means that the risk of death can be sufficiently lowered even if less than half of the goal of “10,000 steps” is met.

In any case, realistically, few achieve the goal of 10,000 miles. Recent statistics show that the average number of steps per day for most adults in the United States, Canada, and major Western countries is less than 5,000 steps. Even if the goal of 10,000 bo is achieved, it is not easy to sustain it for a long time. In Ghent, Belgium, citizens were given pedometers in 2005 and encouraged to walk at least 10,000 steps a day for a year. Of the 660 men and women who completed the study, about 8% achieved their goal of 10,000 views per day. However, in a follow-up study four years later, no one was able to maintain that number of steps per day. They had all returned to their original number of steps before the study.

Governments usually provide time as a guideline rather than step count, but suggest that you exercise at least 150 minutes a week, 30 minutes a day, plus exercise as part of your daily routine. Converted to the number of steps, Dr. Lee said, it would be a little over 16,000 steps a week, or 2,000 to 3,000 steps a day. If you walk about 5000 steps a day for daily life such as shopping or household chores, adding 2000 to 3000 steps will result in you walking 7000 to 8000 steps a day, which is a “just right” number of steps.

By Jang Yoon-jung, staff reporter yunjung@donga.com

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