“You need 10,000 steps a day for longevity”

A 2022 meta-analysis - a study that pools the data of many separate studies - by Paluch and colleagues in The Lancet Public Health combined 15 studies covering 47,471 adults, followed for about seven years [1]. Risk of death from any cause fell as daily steps rose and then flattened out, with the flattening point at 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day in adults aged 60 and over and at 8,000 to 10,000 steps in adults under 60.

The 10,000 figure itself has no basis in that research. It was popularised by the Yamasa 'Manpo-kei' ('10,000-steps meter'), a pedometer sold in Japan in the 1960s, decades before anyone measured step counts against death rates.

A 2023 pooled analysis of 12 studies and 111,309 adults, by Stens and colleagues in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, put the point of greatest benefit at about 8,800 steps a day for risk of dying early [2]. It also found a measurable benefit already at roughly 2,600 steps a day compared with 2,000, so the first few thousand steps do most of the work.

A separate 2023 meta-analysis by Banach and colleagues in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology pooled 17 cohort studies - long-running studies that follow the same large groups of people for years and record who dies - covering 226,889 adults [3]. It found each extra 1,000 steps a day linked to about 15% lower risk of death from any cause, with the benefit still growing rather than stopping at a fixed number.

These findings are not in conflict. The steepest gains come early, and the extra gain from each further 1,000 steps keeps shrinking, which is why one analysis reports a plateau and another reports a slope that never quite ends.

For someone walking 3,000 to 4,000 steps now, getting to 7,000 or 8,000 changes the risk picture far more than pushing on from 8,000 to 10,000. Where the curve flattens varies with age, health and how steps were counted, so treat these figures as a range to aim within, not a pass mark to hit.