Ten thousand, it looks like the new magic number. How often do you hear someone say that he is going to take a walk to get to the ten thousand steps that day? Where does this standard come from, how do you get it, and how necessary is it?
Many people lead a sedentary life – perhaps even more than ever in these days of working from home and home delivery. But sitting too much is very bad for your health. Little exercise can lead to all kinds of complaints such as obesity, brittle bones, weak muscles, inflammation and high blood pressure. This increases the risk of heart disease, chronic diseases and other woes.
In Japan, people had known this for some time: in the 1960s, the doctor Yoshiro Hatano noticed that people who walked half an hour more per day were a lot healthier. In daily life, he concluded, you take an average of six thousand steps a day. With an extra thirty minutes of walking, you add four thousand to that. Thus ten thousand steps per day became the norm. He introduced one of the first pedometers , the manpo-kei , literally the ‘ten thousand steps meter’. It was a great success.
Do you necessarily have to achieve ten thousand steps? Frankly, there isn’t much evidence for that. Dr. Hatano seem more like a marketing campaign. Most of the studies that have been done since then mainly compared the difference between ten to five thousand steps, so what are the benefits of an active over a passive lifestyle. Of course it turns out that people who take ten thousand steps are healthier.
Only recently has it been investigated whether you can achieve the same result with slightly fewer steps. Initial studies seem to show that most people already experience sufficient health benefits at7,500 steps per day.
Whether you’re aiming for 7,500 or 10,000, walking is healthy. With small adjustments in your life, you will be able to increase your daily walking average. Go around the block during the lunch hour, take the stairs instead of the elevator and walk to the supermarket. To help you with this, we have pedometers from Silva . This way you can see exactly how many steps you take in a day.
Good luck!
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