Research from UMass Amherst bolsters claims that fitness can be tied to the number of steps you walk per day.
Researcher Amanda Paluch, an assistant professor of kinesiology, said a study found that individuals who took at least 7,000 steps per day had a 50% to 70% lower risk of premature death compared to those who took less than 7,000 steps per day.
“It was also interesting that we saw that the risk reductions tend to to level off at 10,000 steps per day,” she said. “Meaning that we didn't see any additional benefit going beyond 10,000 steps.”
The number 10,000, Paluch said, grew out of a marketing effort in Japan from a pedometer company in the 1960s.
“And there really hasn't been any scientific evidence to support this 10,000 step goal,” she said.
Her paper — based on actual data — is published in the academic journal JAMA Network Open. Paluch mined data collected by the CARDIA cohort study, which began gathering information on 2,000 participants beginning in the 1980s.
This report courtesy Science Friday.
