Peace At Last, The Need To Walk 10,000 Steps A Day Is Actually A Myth

Is it just us, or does the number of steps you’ve walked each day come with bragging rights these days? It might be the simple fact that we’re now lying prone for 23 hours a day, less our government-sanctioned walks of course, but how far you’ve walked or ran seems to be the new flex everyone wants to bring up in those awkward catch-up moments before a Zoom meeting.

If you’re anything like us, and that is, couldn’t care less about whether Margaret from HR got up at 6am to walk 25billion steps, you’re in luck today. Because actually, there is now scientific proof that all that ‘you must walk 10,000 steps a day’ malarkey is a myth.

That’s right, a myth plucked straight from thin air. Well, sort of, according to experts – it comes from a Japanese marketing campaign that wasn’t based on science at all. In fact, the number of steps we should all be aiming for (sigh) is 7,500 – with any health benefits of walking tapering off after that.

According to two new studies, which combined involved more than 20,000 Americans, those extra 2,500 steps once you reach the almighty 7,500 are nowhere near as beneficial as the first.

‘The more you do the more benefit you get, but the curve tapers off at 7,500 steps,’ wrote I-Min Lee, a medical professor and epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Medicine and lead author of one study. ‘Women that did more than 7,500 didn’t get any extra benefit.’

Researching 17,000 women aged between 62 and 101 (the other researched 4,000 people aged 40 and up), Lee was intrigued by the 10,000 step target and began to research its origin after so many of her older female clients found it too challenging.

Reporting that it ‘probably derives from the trade name of a pedometer sold in 1965 by the Yamasa Clock and Instrument Company’ Lee said the company sold a wearable pedometer that was called Mainpokei, which meant ‘ten thousand step meter’.

‘The Japanese character for 10,000 looks like a man walking, that’s why they chose it,’ she explains. ‘It wasn’t rooted in a scientific study.’

Her findings applied only to mortality, she said, with it not showing the effects of steps on various diseases. It also did not necessarily apply to younger people given she only researched women over 62. The second study however, researching over 40s, looked into the benefit of walking up to 12,000 steps and similarly found the curve levelled off.

So there you have it, a mile of walking time given right back to you on this solemn Tuesday afternoon, you’re welcome.

Click through to see the best sports kit for walking, running and all-around sweaty cardio sessions...