Even walking just 2,200 steps daily can help to reduce the health risks from overly sedentary lifestyles – but this is the bare minimum people should be aiming for, research has suggested.
The study from academics at the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre in Australia has emphasised the more steps you can do, up to around 10,000, can help. The best walking-to-health benefits ratio was between 9,000 and 10,000 steps a day, the research concluded.
The study of more than 72,000 people, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found every additional step up to around 10,000 steps a day was linked to reduced risk of death (39%) and cardiovascular disease (21%), regardless of how much remaining time was spent sedentary.
Lead author and research fellow, Dr Matthew Ahmadi said: “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.”
Previous studies have shown an association between greater daily step count and lower levels of death and cardiovascular disease (CVD), and separate studies have linked high levels of sedentary behaviour with increased risks of CVD and death.
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However, this latest study is the first objectively to measure, via wrist-worn wearables, if daily steps could offset the health risks of high sedentary behaviour, the researchers have argued.
The research team used data on 72,174 individuals (average age 61; 58% female) from the UK Biobank study. They had worn an accelerometer device on their wrist for seven days to measure their physical activity. The accelerometer data were used to estimate daily step count and time spent sedentary, that is sitting or lying down while awake.
The team then followed the health trajectory of the participants by linking hospitalisation data and death records. The median daily step count for participants was 6,222 steps a day, and 2,200 steps a day (the lowest 5% of daily steps among all participants) was taken as the comparator for assessing the impact on death and CVD events of increasing step count.
The median time spent sedentary was 10.6 hours a day. Study participants who were sedentary for 10.5 hours a day or more were considered to have high sedentary time while those who spent less than 10.5 hours a day sedentary were classified as low sedentary time.
Adjustments were made to eliminate biases, such as excluding participants with poor health, who were underweight or had a health event within two years of follow-up.
Researchers also took into account factors such as age, sex, ethnicity, education, smoking status, alcohol consumption, diet and parental history of CVD and cancer.
Over an average 6.9 years follow up period, 1,633 deaths and 6,190 CVD events occurred. After taking account of other potential influences, the authors calculated that the optimal number of steps per day to counteract high sedentary time was between 9,000 and 10,000 steps a day. In both cases, 50% of the benefit was achieved at between 4,000 and 4,500 steps a day.
Separately, a second study, published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, has found even low levels of exercise can help cut the risk of stroke.
These researchers, including from Imperial College London NHS Healthcare Trust, said: “People should be encouraged to be physically active even at the lowest levels.”
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Julie Ward, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said of the studies: “We know that daily physical activity is essential to help maintain a healthy lifestyle and reduce your risk of developing heart conditions and your risk of stroke.
“These hopeful new studies show us that every single step towards making it to 10,000 steps a day counts to reducing risk of death and heart disease. Even low levels of activity can reduce the risk of stroke.”
