5 ms·

> Among the group, walking approximately 4,400 steps a day was associated with a 41% reduction in mortality compared with walking 2,700 steps a day. Walking aro

> Among the group, walking approximately 4,400 steps a day was associated with a 41% reduction in mortality compared with walking 2,700 steps a day. Walking around 7,500 steps was associated with a 65% reduction. The headline does not match the content whatsoever. “The Number To Stay Healthy” implies a threshold beyond which there is no benefit. Yet the data suggests that more steps leads to better health outcomes, so 10k is certainly better than 4K or 7k. If I were the author of this piece I’d be pissed to see it mischaracterized by this clickbait trash headline.

andreilys 6y ago
From what I understand editors have final call on the headline of a piece. Unfortunately it’s sink or swim for news organizations these days so they have to resort to clickbait titles.
- henriquez 6y ago
  Yeah it’s true that clickbait might be a necessary evil in a 0.25 second attention span world but in this case “10k Steps a Day is a Myth” is the _opposite conclusion_ that the study the content was written around supports, since 10k is more beneficial than less than 10k. A headline should at least somewhat represent the content (and no, dang, I’m not suggesting it be changed in this thread ;)
  - artsyca 6y ago
    This is a bit of a tangent but I think we can all agree that with the absolute glut of endless streams of information we are now relying more and more on heuristics to determine what information is relevant than we've ever done. Yet people still go on about never judging books by their titles and all that jazz. Is it finally acceptable to use appearances as a heuristic albeit an imprecise one and to expect people to put some effort into their appearance in aid of this? I mean as valuable as every potential colleague, aquaintance, or other professional contact is I don't have the ability or the wherewithal to get to know everyone I meet on a fundamental level without any external manifestation of their inner nature. Is there a balance between click bait and utterly banal that we can apply to articles, and people too?
    - henriquez 6y ago
      I think, at least personally, it would be difficult to reduce my inner self to a clickbait headline. I am constantly on a journey of self discovery and exploration. The necessities of ego and projecting certain outward appearances in furtherance of my external goals only obscure my inner self, not just from the world, but my own awareness. I’ve been increasingly disturbed by how out of touch I am with myself. I would probably also be disturbed if someone else tried to judge and reduce me to a Buzzfeed headline. Regardless I think your idea is interesting and, for personal use, would aid my introspective process.
      - artsyca 6y ago
        I know the best art is created by embracing constraints.
        henriquez 6y ago
        You’re right and that’s part of why I love the web as a creative medium. Feel free to check out my site if you’re interested. I love your idea and am going to draw inspiration from it for a thought experiment I’m working on.
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
    This all comes down to how you interpret the 10,000-step rule/suggestion. Your interpretation, as “more than 10,000 steps is better than fewer than 10,000 steps” is not, I believe, how most people would understand it. Because for any “normal” number of steps, more would always be better than fewer, according to our current and common understanding of the benefits of physical activity. This would lack any explanation of why 10,000 is being suggested, when the same is just as true for 1,000, or 5,000, or 12,765. There is the interpretation of the 10,000-step idea where it’s the necessary minimum for benefits. Or, weaker, some sort of prominent inflection point on the cost/benefit curve. I believe this is closer to how it is generally understood. The study obviously disproves the minimum idea, and arguably also shows that most of the benefits are achieved long before reaching 10,000. As an aside: This study doesn’t support, or at least it doesn’t prove that more than 10,000 is better than less than 10,000. We do know that, beyond some point, physical activity stops being beneficial and becomes harmful. Olympic medalists, for example, tend to die earlier than both non-medaling competitors, and the general population they are from.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
So is there "no benefit" to taking 20K steps a day versus 10K?
- fsloth 6y ago
  Well, either you gain immortality or the effect plateaus off. But seriously, to my understanding, if you walk just because you want to stay healthy, statistically 10k is a good baseline.
- artsyca 6y ago
  10k steps is about 6km give or take.
- tedmiston 6y ago
  Maybe the point at which diminishing marginal returns really kick in, and "benefit"... with respect to what metric are worthwhile factors to consider here. The graph shows mortality rate but perhaps other cardiovascular disease markers would be meaningful to look at here. In general, it would be nice for one to know some correlation between how the number of steps taken reduces one's risk. From what the article suggests, presumably these would be non-linear relationships.
E5JBK7UJPT 6y ago
I think the point is that the specific number, 10000, was based on advertisement for the pedometer rather than actual health advice.
gpvos 6y ago
> “The Number To Stay Healthy” implies a threshold beyond which there is no benefit. To me it doesn't it implies a number which would give you a good average health condition, or maybe a threshold beyond which the marginal benefit will start to outweigh the marginal effort for an average person (hard to establish that, though). A "threshold beyond which there is no benefit" sounds like a way too high target.

andreilys 6y ago

From what I understand editors have final call on the headline of a piece. Unfortunately it’s sink or swim for news organizations these days so they have to resort to clickbait titles.

henriquez 6y ago
Yeah it’s true that clickbait might be a necessary evil in a 0.25 second attention span world but in this case “10k Steps a Day is a Myth” is the _opposite conclusion_ that the study the content was written around supports, since 10k is more beneficial than less than 10k. A headline should at least somewhat represent the content (and no, dang, I’m not suggesting it be changed in this thread ;)
- artsyca 6y ago
  This is a bit of a tangent but I think we can all agree that with the absolute glut of endless streams of information we are now relying more and more on heuristics to determine what information is relevant than we've ever done. Yet people still go on about never judging books by their titles and all that jazz. Is it finally acceptable to use appearances as a heuristic albeit an imprecise one and to expect people to put some effort into their appearance in aid of this? I mean as valuable as every potential colleague, aquaintance, or other professional contact is I don't have the ability or the wherewithal to get to know everyone I meet on a fundamental level without any external manifestation of their inner nature. Is there a balance between click bait and utterly banal that we can apply to articles, and people too?
  - henriquez 6y ago
    I think, at least personally, it would be difficult to reduce my inner self to a clickbait headline. I am constantly on a journey of self discovery and exploration. The necessities of ego and projecting certain outward appearances in furtherance of my external goals only obscure my inner self, not just from the world, but my own awareness. I’ve been increasingly disturbed by how out of touch I am with myself. I would probably also be disturbed if someone else tried to judge and reduce me to a Buzzfeed headline. Regardless I think your idea is interesting and, for personal use, would aid my introspective process.
    - artsyca 6y ago
      I know the best art is created by embracing constraints.
      - henriquez 6y ago
        You’re right and that’s part of why I love the web as a creative medium. Feel free to check out my site if you’re interested. I love your idea and am going to draw inspiration from it for a thought experiment I’m working on.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  This all comes down to how you interpret the 10,000-step rule/suggestion. Your interpretation, as “more than 10,000 steps is better than fewer than 10,000 steps” is not, I believe, how most people would understand it. Because for any “normal” number of steps, more would always be better than fewer, according to our current and common understanding of the benefits of physical activity. This would lack any explanation of why 10,000 is being suggested, when the same is just as true for 1,000, or 5,000, or 12,765. There is the interpretation of the 10,000-step idea where it’s the necessary minimum for benefits. Or, weaker, some sort of prominent inflection point on the cost/benefit curve. I believe this is closer to how it is generally understood. The study obviously disproves the minimum idea, and arguably also shows that most of the benefits are achieved long before reaching 10,000. As an aside: This study doesn’t support, or at least it doesn’t prove that more than 10,000 is better than less than 10,000. We do know that, beyond some point, physical activity stops being beneficial and becomes harmful. Olympic medalists, for example, tend to die earlier than both non-medaling competitors, and the general population they are from.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

So is there "no benefit" to taking 20K steps a day versus 10K?

fsloth 6y ago
Well, either you gain immortality or the effect plateaus off. But seriously, to my understanding, if you walk just because you want to stay healthy, statistically 10k is a good baseline.
artsyca 6y ago
10k steps is about 6km give or take.
tedmiston 6y ago
Maybe the point at which diminishing marginal returns really kick in, and "benefit"... with respect to what metric are worthwhile factors to consider here. The graph shows mortality rate but perhaps other cardiovascular disease markers would be meaningful to look at here. In general, it would be nice for one to know some correlation between how the number of steps taken reduces one's risk. From what the article suggests, presumably these would be non-linear relationships.

E5JBK7UJPT 6y ago

I think the point is that the specific number, 10000, was based on advertisement for the pedometer rather than actual health advice.

gpvos 6y ago

> “The Number To Stay Healthy” implies a threshold beyond which there is no benefit. To me it doesn't it implies a number which would give you a good average health condition, or maybe a threshold beyond which the marginal benefit will start to outweigh the marginal effort for an average person (hard to establish that, though). A "threshold beyond which there is no benefit" sounds like a way too high target.