My own personal step goal is 10,000 steps a day.
But NB - I just found out this originated not from rigorous science, but from a 1960s marketing campaign in Japan promoting a pedometer called “manpo-kei,” meaning “10,000-step meter”
While 10K steps appeals to our base-10 bias, a new systematic review recently published in The Lancet suggests that 7,000 daily steps is sufficient to maintain health...
in this review, researchers analyzed 57 global studies, encompassing more than 160,000 adults and discovered that 7K (not 10K) daily steps is correlated with a
- 47% decreased risk of death from all causes
- 25% decreased risk of cardiovascular disease
- 37–47% decreased risk of cancer death
- 38% decreased risk of dementia
- 22% decreased risk of depression
- 14% decreased risk of type 2 diabetes
- 28% decreased risk of falls in older adults
And the rate of progress in benefits diminishes after 7,000. Beyond this point for most sicknesses, improvements yield diminishing returns—though remaining active at 10,000 steps still offers marginal gains.
Aside from that, small gains—like boosting daily steps from 2,000 to 4,000—paid huge rewards, including a 36% decline in mortality risk
More attainable and less guilt...?
Personally this is great news, 7K for me is a much more natural daily target on my non-run days, that's roughly where I end up on a normal day, without having to get any extra steps in, just for the sake of it.
That said look where I've ended up today.....
FINAL THOUGHTS..
Right, I'm off to get my daily total up to 10K, I'm all about that base 10 bias!