What's the point?
This figure, in fact, is taken from the same “ceiling” as the canonical 10 thousand steps, which are included in almost all pedometers by default. The very first mass-produced device was released in the 60s of the last century in Japan and was called, in translation, “10 thousand step meter” - Manpo-kei.
The essence of what then and now has not changed. Help us get off the couch and notice how little we move. Today, everyone always carries smartphones with them, in which, in most cases, this same manpo-kei is built in at a basic level. From personal practice: when we talk about concerns about excess weight, I ask you to open the program and look at the average number of steps per week or month. Firstly, many people are surprised to learn about the presence of such a function, and secondly, it is rare to see numbers of more than 3-4 thousand steps per day.
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In an anatomy textbook edited by Ivanitsky (a book well-known in certain circles, not a Bible, of course, but somewhere nearby) many, many years ago it was written: “Human movements have not only qualitative, but also quantitative characteristics. The body is for its normal ( key word. - Ed.)
) functioning requires a certain volume (number) of movements.” Next, briefly about “motor hunger” and hypokinesia disease. And finally, about the fact that “the volume of movements is usually assessed by the number of steps.”
How much should you move and where did the norm of 10,000 steps a day come from?
Physical inactivity is a big problem for health (which worries ministries of health throughout the Western world) and figure (which worries people who do not yet have problems with blood pressure, sugar, blood vessels, etc.).
Quarantine 2021 has shown that we can sit at home all day and maintain life support, even a good one: earn money, order food and goods for delivery, communicate and study via the Internet without leaving your chair.
The official WHO recommendations today are 150-300 minutes of activity per week or 30-60 minutes per day, according to other major healthy lifestyle organizations (American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association, US Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Agency of Canada , British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences). Any activity of moderate intensity is considered - one that increases the heart rate, but which can be maintained for a long time (more than 10 minutes). Most often this is walking, as the most accessible, and counting steps using bracelets or applications on a smartphone is an easy way to monitor activity level (counting minutes is more difficult if there are several activities in segments during the day). That's why scientists are interested in exactly how many steps meet the daily activity recommendations.
First, over the past few years, many systematic reviews have been conducted on the activity levels of modern adults. Thus, adults in the United States take approximately 6,500 steps per day. Japanese aged 15 years and older - about 7,200 steps per day. Western Australians aged 18 years and over: 9,600 steps per day. Belgian adults aged 25-75 take approximately 9,600 steps per day, while Swiss adults aged 25-74 take 8,900 steps per day (women) and 10,400 steps per day (men).
In 2004, scientists introduced the concept of determining activity level based on the number of steps per day:
- <5000 steps per day (“sedentary lifestyle”)
- 5000-7499 steps/day (“low activity level”)
- 7500-9999 steps/day (“moderately active”)
- 10,000–12,499 steps/day (“active”)
- ≥12,500 steps/day (“very active”)
And in 2008, they revised the original “sedentary” level (<5000 steps/day) and further divided it into two steps: <2500 steps/day (“basic activity”) and 2500-4999 steps/day (“limited activity”) . In any case, “5000 steps/day” remains the threshold that defines a sedentary lifestyle (additional reviews here and here).
Further, it was calculated that when walking at moderate intensity, adults take ~100 steps per minute (, , , , ). If for health, according to recommendations, you need to move at least 150 minutes per week, then at a rate of 100 steps per minute, you get an additional 15,000 steps per week. Add them to the “low activity” baseline of 35,000 steps per week (5,000 steps x 7 days) and we get 50,000 steps per week or 7,100 steps per day.
At the same time, 150 minutes of activity is the recommended minimum, and 300 minutes per week bring even more benefits. If we recalculate similarly, we get +30,000 steps per week to the basic “sedentary” 35,000 steps and get a norm of 65,000 steps per week or ~9300 steps per day.
And if we take the recommendations for activity not for a week, but for a day (30-60 minutes daily), we get similar figures when converted to the number of steps per minute: 5000 steps as a base level + 3000-6000 additional steps = 8000-11000 steps per minute day.
This leaves a range of 7,100-11,000 steps per day, which is considered a good daily activity level for adults (assuming an adequate pace of 100 steps per minute). So, on the one hand, we get the same 10,000 steps that everyone has heard about, and on the other, a range with which it will be easier for many to fit into the norm.
What happens if you start taking 10 thousand steps a day?
So the answer to the question of what exactly will happen to the body if you suddenly start regularly “walking” a certain norm of 10 thousand steps will be simple: nothing special will happen to it, it will just finally begin to function normally. The way nature designed it.
Imagine that your body is a car with a bunch of different components and assemblies. And so it turns out that some of these parts are regularly used, while the rest remain inactive for years or decades. Surely such an imbalance will not be healthy for the car as a whole. This is exactly what happens to our body when we do not receive even such a minimum of regular activity as simple walking. And this can manifest itself in dozens of different ways - from migraines to varicose veins. And yes, overweight too. Here the connection couldn’t be more direct. If we move little, we spend little calories. And we eat these calories, most likely, with a reserve.
So yes - by taking a certain number of steps every day, you will bring yourself closer to your ideal body with literally every step. But for this you need, of course, to sort out the issue with nutrition.
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Plus 2 thousand steps
A recent study from the University of Texas also found that if you walk less than 5,000 steps a day, your metabolism will deteriorate. The accumulation of fat deposits in the body can also increase the likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes. This is also supported by previous studies, which show that people who walked less than 4 thousand steps per day were no longer able to reverse the decline in fat metabolism.
Increasing physical activity, such as the number of steps walked per day, reduces the risk of death by improving health, including by reducing the risk of developing some serious diseases such as dementia and some types of cancer. In special cases it helps improve health conditions, for example in patients suffering from type 2 diabetes. Exercise can also help us improve and maintain our immune system. However, based on current research, it appears that achieving exactly 10,000 steps per day is not essential for health—half of that goal is already beneficial.
If you want to increase the number of steps you take daily or simply want to move more, one easy way to do this is to increase your current step count by about 2k steps per day. Other simple ways to move more each day are to walk to work if possible, or take part in an online exercise program if you work from home. Meeting friends for a walk—rather than at a café or bar—can also be helpful. And given that even a little physical activity has a positive effect on your health, taking regular stretch breaks if you work at a desk all day can easily help you achieve higher levels of physical activity.
Lindsay Bottoms, translated by Anna Nikolaeva
SportsSocietyMedicine
Balance: nutrition and physical activity
But even with a puff pastry of Sverdlovskaya in one hand and a bag of chips in the other, your daily walks will not turn out to be a waste of time (or even worse - dangerous, like some types of physical activity that are popular today). There will be benefits to a greater or lesser extent. Well, or at least it will be the norm.
Why am I asking you to walk not 10 thousand steps, but 12 thousand? It’s just that practice has shown that everyone starts to “get 10 thousand” quite quickly during the day, simply by getting off at the stop earlier or not pressing the elevator call button every time. But these additional 2 thousand often turn out to be the very line that separates those who just “play healthy lifestyle and PP” and who really need to get back to normal. Including physically.
More details
The idea of walking 10,000 steps a day has become so popular thanks to marketers. It was formulated by pedometer manufacturers on the eve of the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. In the early 2000s, scientists revived interest in the number of steps. But in their case, the guidance was not the result of finding the optimal amount of activity, but a strategy to encourage people to move more. When we all got gadgets that count steps themselves, 10,000 became the gold standard.
What exactly is the optimal number of steps? Most likely, more than 15,000 steps a day, or about two hours of walking—assuming that's all your physical activity. Thus, in one American study, the lowest risk of death was found in people who were active for more than 100 minutes a day. And a study of postal workers in Glasgow, the city with the lowest life expectancy in Britain, found that those who walked more than 15,000 steps a day had the same good heart and metabolic health as hunter-gatherers. But all this does not mean that everyone needs to walk 15,000 steps. By focusing on numbers, we lose sight of two more important factors: intensity and regularity.
Intensity in the case of walking is the speed at which we walk. If you look at the WHO recommendations, they recommend brisk walking: it refers to moderate-intensity exercise. This is no coincidence. Fast walking significantly increases your heart rate and is therefore more beneficial than slow walking. So, in one study, people who walked at a fast and slow pace were compared. Those who walked quickly were 24% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease than slow walkers. Their cholesterol levels and blood pressure were lower, and their blood oxygen saturation was better.
Scientists have tried to answer the question of how intense walking must be to provide health benefits, and have come up with the following formula: for adults, walking at a speed of more than 100 steps per minute is beneficial. However, this is a very approximate norm. The intensity of the load should depend on your experience and physical capabilities: for some, walking at a speed of 100 steps per minute may be excessive, for others it may not be enough. To make walking effective, but not exhausting, listen to your body: the pace should slightly accelerate your heart rate and quicken your breathing.
Equally important is how regularly we walk. So, scientists conducted an experiment: they asked usually active volunteers to reduce their movement to a minimum for two weeks. This was enough time for arterial function and insulin sensitivity to decrease and body fat to increase. The researchers concluded that a short two-week period of inactivity increased the volunteers' risk of subsequently developing cardiovascular disease. Moreover, it took participants more than two weeks to return to the level of activity that was before the break. So it’s better to walk less than 10,000 or 15,000 steps, but do it regularly.
What about other types of physical activity? Walking gives endurance - like other cyclic exercises, where there are many repetitions in the same pulse zone: running, swimming, cycling and dancing. If the goal is the harmonious development of the body, it is worth adding to it something that develops other physical qualities: strength, speed, agility and flexibility. For strength you need strength training, for speed - a variety of jumps, for agility - training in situations of instability, for flexibility - stretching exercises and yoga. Sports doctor Evgeniy Kadlubinsky spoke about this in detail.
But in fact, in order to be healthy, you don’t have to play sports—it’s enough to just move, a lot and in a variety of ways. Residents of the so-called “blue zones”, that is, areas with the highest average life expectancy, do not often train specifically. A healthy level of activity can be maintained through walking (so walking will still be necessary) and a variety of daily activities, such as gardening and cleaning without unnecessary technical devices.
This experience shows that the best movement for health is that which becomes a way of life. To do this, the author of the blog about natural movement, Nutritious Movement, Katie Bowman and her readers suggest filling your life with a variety of activities as much as possible: replacing transport with expensive walking, a cup of coffee with a friend - a joint walk, convenient automated devices like a lawn mower - more labor-intensive mechanical ones. There are no universal tips here, but you need imagination and a desire to take advantage of every opportunity. Why not walk along curbs to train your balance, or go mushroom picking with the whole family - and do some squats, just like in fitness? Any movement is good for health, especially if it also brings joy.
Don't miss a day
I suggest you don’t believe a single word I say, but try to walk for exactly a month. Every day, without absence even for the most valid reasons. As my good friend, who successfully “walked” himself into a figure of fitness standards, wrote, “a lot changes in your head. It’s just that at some point you realize that in fact you always have a choice! If it’s raining outside, you can choose what to take – an umbrella or a raincoat.”
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