Physical inactivity affects more than a quarter of the world’s population, with more women than men (32% vs. 23%). According to WHO, physical inactivity is the fourth most common cause of death globally, with 3.2 million deaths per year linked to physical inactivity. There is strong evidence that sedentary lifestyles may lead to increased cardiovascular disease and shorter life expectancy.

Walking is the easiest form of physical activity, so how many steps a day do you need to see health benefits?
It may turn out to be less than you think.

A large-scale research study published recently in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found that walking at least 3,967 steps per day reduced the risk of all-cause mortality and 2,337 steps per day reduced the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.

This new analysis involving 226,889 people from 17 different studies around the world shows that the more you walk, the greater the health benefits. For every additional 500 to 1,000 steps, the risk of dying from any cause or cardiovascular disease is significantly reduced. The risk of dying from any cause was reduced by 15 percent with 1,000 extra steps per day, and the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease was reduced by 7 percent with 500 extra steps per day.
In addition, the health benefits continue to increase even with 20,000 steps per day. No upper limit has yet been found.

Prof. Maciej Banach, Professor of Cardiology at the Medical University of Lodz, Poland, says: “Research confirms that the more you walk, the better you get. This applies to both men and women, regardless of age and whether they live in temperate, subtropical, subpolar or mixed climates. In addition, our analysis shows that just 4,000 steps per day significantly reduces deaths from any cause, and even less from cardiovascular disease.”
Dr. Ibadete Bytyçi of the University of Kosovo Clinical Center said, “So far, it is not clear what the optimal number of steps is, either in terms of the cut-off point at which one can start to see health benefits, or the upper limit, if there is one.”

The meta-analysis not only assessed for the first time the effects of walking 20,000 steps a day, but also looked at whether there were differences in age, gender or where people lived around the world.

The researchers followed the study participants for an average of seven years. The average age was 64, and 49 percent of the participants were women. The reduction in the risk of death was smaller in those aged 60 and older than in those under 60. Those over 60 who walked 6,000 to 10,000 steps a day had a 42 percent lower risk of disease, while those under 60 who walked 7,000 to 13,000 steps a day had a 49 percent lower risk of disease.

Prof. Banach noted that in a world with more and more advanced drugs to target specific diseases such as cardiovascular disease, it should always be emphasized that lifestyle changes, including diet and exercise, are the mainstay of our analysis, and are likely to be at least as effective, if not more so, in lowering cardiovascular risk and increasing life expectancy.

“Further research is still needed to investigate whether these benefits are present in high-intensity exercise, such as marathons and ironman challenges, as well as in different populations at different ages and with different associated health problems, among others. However, as with medication, we should always consider personalized lifestyle changes.”

The strengths of this meta-analysis are its size and the fact that it was not limited to studies of up to 16,000 steps per day. Limitations include the fact that this was an observational study, so it cannot prove that increasing the number of steps led to a lower risk of death, only that it was associated with it; also, the effect of steps was not tested in patients with different diseases, and all the participants were healthy at the time they entered the study for analysis; and the methods used to calculate the number of steps were not the same in the studies involved, among other things.