A recent study has confirmed what other studies have long told us. There’s no scientific basis to targeting 10,000 steps a day.

But logging about 7,000 steps a day would benefit most adults, the authors found.

The researchers reviewed 57 studies encompassing several hundred thousand adults and considered not just mortality, but cardiovascular disease, dementia, falls, cancer, type 2 diabetes, and depressive symptoms. The authors found additional steps bring greater health benefits — but only to a point — after which the gains generally flatten out.

Compared to those walking 2,000 steps a day — the lower bound of the normal range for older adults — researchers found that people who logged about 7,000 steps per day enjoyed a long list of benefits, including:

• 47% lower risk of death (all-cause mortality)
• 47% lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality
• 25% lower risk of cardiovascular disease incidence
• 38% lower risk of dementia
• 37% lower risk of cancer mortality
• 28% lower risk of falls
• 22% lower risk of depressive symptoms
• 14% lower risk of type 2 diabetes

There may have been biases in the individual studies, and a small number of studies were available for most outcomes, the authors concede. But if there were a drug that delivered those sorts of numbers, it would be a blockbuster.

“Although 10,000 steps per day can still be a viable target for those who are more active, 7,000 steps per day is associated with clinically meaningful improvements in health outcomes and might be a more realistic and achievable target for some,” the authors concluded.

Ed Melanson, a professor of endocrinology, metabolism and diabetes at the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the Anschutz Medical Campus, agrees.

“I do think that the data have accumulated to say that around 7,000 to 8,000 steps is a good spot to be for targeting public health recommendations,” he said.

In case you track your miles, walking or running 10,000 steps a day equates to about five miles, depending on the length of each of your steps, while logging 7,000 steps equates to between three and four miles.

Older people need fewer steps

Melanson, who leads the University of Colorado medical school’s Energy Metabolism Lab, pointed to a 2022 study that came to similar conclusions, although it considered only all-cause mortality. The report considered 15 studies done between 1999 and 2018 with about 47,000 adults.

Those among the bottom 25% averaged 3,553 steps a day. Those who averaged 5,800 steps a day had a 40% lower chance of death than those in the bottom 25%. People who averaged 7,800 steps a day had a 45% lower chance of death than the first group. And those who averaged 10,900 steps had a 47% lower chance of death — only marginally better than those who walked about a mile less, on average.

The study also found that fewer steps can take you farther, mortality-risk wise, as you age. Mortality rates leveled off at 6,000 to 8,000 steps per day among those over age 60. For those younger than 60, that happened at 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day.

Melanson suspects that lower step counts deliver more health benefits for older people because, given their lower functional capacity, a given step count comprises “a higher percentage of your reserve.” It’s the same logic as that behind age-adjusted times in running: a 60-year-old man works roughly as hard to run an 8-minute mile as a 25-year-old does at a 6:30 pace.

Speaking of pace, Melanson notes a 2007 Japanese study involving a group of men and women averaging age 63 who logged about 8,000 steps a day. Those who alternated between walking fast (70% of aerobic capacity) with their normal pace scored better on a variety of physical and cardiovascular metrics.

10,000 steps was an arbitrary figure

That 10,000 steps is a flawed benchmark is unsurprising given its origins. Yamasa Corp., a Japanese maker of industrial instruments and watches, produced the first commercial pedometer in 1965 to capitalize on the lingering focus on fitness after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Yamasa called the device the “manpo kei,” literally “10,000-step meter.” A “man” is the number 10,000 in Japanese and a heavily-used numerical term (to verbalize “one million” in Japanese, one says, “a hundred man”). Ten thousand happened to be a nice, familiar, round number — and a lot of steps. Whether the kanji character, 万, evokes a person walking, which has also been posited, we will leave to the reader.

The bottom line is that walking and other cardiovascular activities are healthy for all sorts of bodily systems. What’s come to the fore more recently is the relative importance of strength training, particularly as we age. ( Learn how women can get started with strength training.)

Don’t just walk. Do resistance training too.

Muscle strength peaks at about age 30 and then starts declining at a rate of about 3% to 8% per decade until roughly age 60, at which point it accelerates further. Resistance training, also known as strength training, has been shown to deliver a long list of benefits, many of which overlap with those of cardiovascular training. But strength training can also improve physical performance, movement control, and balance in ways that walking and other low-intensity movement cannot.

“Especially with just walking, you’re not going to build muscle mass,” Melanson said. “And we know with strength training that preserving muscle mass is so important for function as we get older.”

It’s not necessarily about putting on a tank top and heading to the CrossFit gym. Bodyweight exercises, light dumbbells, and stretchy resistance bands can suffice. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s “Growing Stronger” program has a nice set of exercises for those just getting started, and there are many video tutorials on YouTube, such as this one from the National Institute on Aging.

You don’t have to carve out time for a half-hour walk five days a week to get close to the recommended 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity (or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity), either. Take the stairs rather than the elevator. Go on a quick stroll after a meal. Park in the first space you see rather than trolling for a rockstar spot. Just as long as you get out and move.