The Texas Heart Institute says health benefits begin at around 2,500 steps a day, with the rate of mortality declining steadily until patients hit 7,500 steps a day.
“We believe that the right step count is somewhere between about seven and 8000,” said Dr. Joseph Rogers, Director of the Texas Heart Institute at Baylor College of Medicine. “You begin to get those benefits at around 2,500 steps. There’s a pretty steep curve where the benefit continues to increase as you get up to around 7-8000 steps per day and then the curve begins to flatten. So, you do get some incremental benefit if you get up to 10,000 or 12,000. But the incremental benefit becomes less at that point.”
That’s different than the 10,000 steps you might’ve been told to aim for, but more achievable, right?
This means, for an average person on their feet and moving for more than an hour a day, they can land in the range of a healthy step count.
“We think the data is so compelling that when you go to your doctor, your doctor should ask to see that piece of it,” Dr. Rogers said. “Start having a conversation with patients about increasing the step at the daily step count.”
Should it be the next vital sign?
“That was the title of the paper, Step Count: The Next Vital Sign. We think that there’s so much information and the linkage now is so compelling between daily step count and not only your risk f cardiovascular events, but step count has been related to your risks of cancer and neurovascular conditions like stroke and even dementia. So, it’s very clear that there is this tight linkage between daily step count and outcomes,” Dr. Rogers said. “It’s sort of this trigger for all of us to say, I could actually, without too much effort, I could get into the right step count range by just modifying my lifestyle a little bit.”
This means without carving out extra time for exercise, Dr. Rogers said you can look for the times in your day when you can add more steps: walking in from a parking lot, walking around when you have an extra 15 minutes, etc.
