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Walking 8k Steps Twice a Week Could Prolong Your Life, Study Finds
- zerr 4y agoBy the tiny fraction of the time you've spent/wasted walking? :)
- anonporridge 4y agoDoctors: It's really important that you regularly exercise. Get your heart rate up high a few times a week with some sports! Doctors: Just 10,000 steps of walking every day is fine too! Doctors: Ok, how about 8,000 steps only once or twice a week. Can you do that? Doctors: For the love of god, please just get off the couch every once in a while...
- farseer 4y agoYou joke but perhaps we need to (scientifically) find the minimum number of steps for a reasonable lifespan in tabular form for a given weight, lifestyle, diet, occupation and ethnicity. The law of diminishing returns will apply after a certain amount of physical activity. So will negative consequences of too much exercise where you damage your limbs.
- fdsijo 4y agoWorrying about over exercise is like worrying about starting another ice age fighting global warming.
- notahacker 4y agoUntangling cause and effect (it clearly works both directions) is near-impossible, the intensity of the steps obviously also matters, and anyone trying to exercise to the statistical minimum before diminishing returns kick in probably has other issues. I don't think many people need to worry about limb damage from over-walking, and the ones who have already experienced limb damage need to find alternative exercise rather than minmaxing steps...
- anonporridge 4y agoThe absolute worse thing you can do for your knees and other joints is be obese. The constant weight and stress wrecks you. This is also why young, fit males come out of the military with wrecked knees, not because of all the running, but because they march around constantly carrying 100+ lb packs, on bodies that would be at a healthy weight of 150lbs. There's even evidence that distance running strengthens your knees, contrary to common knowledge. https://archive.ph/utsUF https://archive.ph/utsUF Worrying about too much exercise for the average person is like worrying about drinking too much water on a desert hike.
- qayxc 4y agoIsn't that overthinking it big time? Biologically humans have evolved to walk roughly 10-15km a day. You really have to overdo it to get to negative consequences of light physical activities such as walking. Just talking a one hour walk every day surely doesn't get you anywhere near the red zone, provided you're otherwise reasonably healthy.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoI am by no means an expert of any kind, but I know several people that seem to have damages their needs by pushing themselves in running or cycling.
- xboxnolifes 4y agoBoth of which are not walking.
- comfypotato 4y agoThere’s not much science for the ultramarathon folks, but in general more is better. This talk of negative consequences of too much exercise has no grounding in reality.
- seattle_spring 4y agoThe people I see that cite the risks of "over exercising" are exclusively people in bad shape. My sister in law, sedentary and textbook obese, insists that running is dangerous for anyone due to the "extra stress it puts on knees." It's just an excuse people use to convince themselves that they're doing the right thing by not moving much. I see it too with people not eating healthy foods like vegetables because they read somewhere that the pesticide residue or whatever is worse for you than just eating processed food all day.
- jtbayly 4y agoI’d guess that starting to run while obese would indeed do substantial damage to the joints.
- chas 4y agoI think it’s important to note that you are assuming a gradual increase in activity over time as well as adequate food and rest between sessions. In the limit case things like rhabdomyolysis definitely exist and in the less-extreme case, you can have problems with connective tissue injuries from increasing the load or volume of exercise too fast. Over the long term, you can also have health problems and injuries caused by doing too much exercise relative to how much food and rest you are getting. All of these are real possibilities if someone started an intense exercise program after 20 years of completely sedentary life as an adult. That said, we are discussing this in the context of walking a bit more, which should be very well-tolerated for pretty much everyone as long as they don’t have other significant health problems and work up gradually. For example, if you take 1000 steps a day, space out the increase by each week increasing your daily steps by 500-1000 steps a day until you reach 10000 steps a day over the course of a few months (temporarily pause or reverse the increases if you see anything other than passing muscular discomfort). This also explains how ultramarathon (or other “extreme” physical activities) can be tolerated without much issue—bodies are very good at adapting to the loads that are placed on them as long as that increase is gradual and they have enough food and rest to rebuild after particularly intense bouts of activity. A further corollary is that over the long term, being sedentary is not well-tolerated at all, so maintaining a certain baseline level of physical activity is definitely a better idea and as long as your body isn’t giving you any feedback to the contrary, you shouldn’t avoid high loads or intense activity just out of abstract fear of injury.
- fwungy 4y agoMetabolism is genetic, Diabetes is too. You need to include genetic factors.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago> An average person has a stride length of approximately 2.1 to 2.5 feet. That means that it takes over 2,000 steps to walk one mile and 10,000 steps would be almost 5 miles.
- lonelygirl15a 4y agoThe word “mile” comes from Latin “mille passus”, one thousand paces. A pace was measures from same footfalls: left, left, left. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Historical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Historical
- mejutoco 4y agoFor other readers, about 8km.
- jillesvangurp 4y agoIt's good advice though. I used to not move around a lot and it was having an impact. These days I build walking into my routine. I walk to work, about 5km. Takes me about 55 minutes. I try to do this several times per week. Sometimes I take public transport or the bike if I'm in a hurry. Usually I walk back as well. And when I'm working from home, I take a walk during lunch break or at the end of the day. It took the covid lockdowns for me to discover that I actually enjoy this stuff. I put some headphones on and listen some podcasts. I can't focus on a podcast at home or while working. I get distracted or I start doing other things and lose focus. When I walk, I listen. So when I want to listen to a podcast, I just go for a walk now. And if it's a long podcast, I just walk a bit longer. Anyway, this stuff does seem to work for me. And I don't even mind doing it. Win win.
- alpaca128 4y agoI heard that the reason behind the popular 10k step number was the first step counter on the market which was limited to 9999 steps, and people saw that as a challenge to reach. Meanwhile this is more like the 5th study I've heard of which talks about some measure of exercise at least 1-2 times a week, like 20+ minutes of cycling.
- HopenHeyHi 4y agoCorrect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adherence_(medicine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adherence_(medicine) Although the studies I glanced at say something like: <2000 steps, couch potato, certain doom >2000 greatest reduction in risk 6,000–9,000 steps per day 50% reduced risk of CVD for 60+ year olds <=== you want to get used to this as your baseline to be a healthy silver fox 10k steps, marketing for original pedometer 20k steps, best way to lose weight, almost nobody does this daily :) Here is a depressing video High School Fitness (1962): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGa6BPj3Mcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGa6BPj3Mcw And the easiest one to compare is of course US basic training standards that have gone down each time they have been revised since WWII.
- readthenotes1 4y agoDoctors: at the very least, do not sit in the couch, recline. Sitting is very bad for you!
- cozzyd 4y agoI wonder how remote work has impacted the average number of steps per day. I normally get ~5k steps from my commute (walk from home to train, walk from train to office and vice versa) without doing anything else. On days I work from home I'm definitely much more sedentary. Yes I can go on a walk to compensate, but I usually don't...
- johnyzee 4y agoListen to good books while walking.
- ericbarrett 4y agoBiggest change for me was going from a city, where there was some walking every day—the train stop, grocery, meetups with friends—to the suburbs. Doesn't matter if it's WFH or commute, in most 'burbs the only required walk is to the garage.
- algem 4y agoWorking from home has increased my physical activity. I'm able to go to parks and walking trails near by during breaks. Weight lift during lunch break and since I no longer lose 2 hours a day to commuting I'm able play sports like golf and hockey more frequently, not relying only on weekends to do these sports is amazing. Golf more because I am available more during day light time and hockey more because I am able to get other things done which frees up my night time.
- fifilura 4y agoWFH allowed me to get a dog. That made me start running every day. I am now on day 240 of my daily run streak (https://www.runeveryday.com/ https://www.runeveryday.com/)
- BigCryo 4y agoAin't going to help ...you're going to die anyway.. so best you just move to Brazil and travel to the Amazon River and build a raft and live on it and catch fish and pick fruit and stare up at the stars every night till you get old and decrepit and wonder at the marvelous universe that you were born in until one day you see no more and you feel no more and you are no more.. instead of just striving and working out and stepping steps and earning and working and working and earning.. just my thoughts.. but you do you
- rayrey 4y agoProbably get killed by a poacher or illegal gold miner.
- tiedieconderoga 4y agoIf you don't mind me asking, why don't you do that? If you already are, what are the rates like for Starlink's jungle-rafting plan?
- BigCryo 4y agoBecause I believe that in my essence I am essentially just information contained in my brain.. and I believe that if such information can be sufficiently preserved for a sufficiently long period of time, then I believe that such information can be recovered in sufficient quantities so that the person that I am can be revived or live again some other means or ways.. that might mean immortality for me because information could be considered immortal.. therefore I signed up for cryonics, the practice of freezing the brain after death so that the brain can be preserved for long periods of time in order for some revival to take place in the distant future.. if there were no such thing as cryonics, I would be floating on a raft in the Amazon right now, because there really isn't much point to all this other stuff in my opinion
- tiedieconderoga 4y agoWell, that is a point of view. There's a video game you might like, called SOMA.
- eminence32 4y agoRecently a got fairly basic, but fully functional smart/sports watch. It counts steps, heart rate, "intensity minutes", distance, GPS, etc. I got it because I was hoping that having a neat gadget to track this stuff would help motivate me to get in those extra exercise minutes. It turns out that it works for me. Seeing the distance/step numbers go up satisfies the little "make graph go up" gremlin in my brain.
- anonporridge 4y agoI'm getting this effect even better now with smartwatch tracked runs and activities uploaded of Strava, which has a premium feature that tracks a "fitness score" alongside with a fatigue score, based on the intensity of the workouts you record. https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216918477-Fitness-Freshness https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216918477-Fitne... It's really motivating to see that number go up, or at least maintain it and build more area under the curve. The Strava social component is also motivating because it adds some accountability with friends seeing and liking your workouts, and then noticing if you stop.
- kerpotgh 4y ago[dead]
- alpaca128 4y agoIt can definitely be motivating, though some features are more "one size fits all", like the intensity minute counter. I know a person who gets maybe one intensity minute per week when it should be 300+, simply because the heart rate is lower on average than the manufacturer expects. Meanwhile my count is usually doubled because it counts very intense minutes twice and 99% of the time I exceed the seemingly hardcoded threshold while doing sports.
- eminence32 4y agoMine fortunately has an "automatic" mode for determining those thresholds, as well a way to manually configure the thresholds (which sounds like it would be useful for the two cases you mentioned)
- lumb63 4y agoThis just in: the human body, after billions of years of evolving to be a active, walking organism, is not well suited to a sedentary, seated lifestyle. Seriously, why would we expect the sedentary, monotonous life of office jobs or being couch potatoes to be good for us? This study only looks at duration of life, but quality of life is huge, too. Exposure to sunlight, using your body, socialization, and eating real food, all do wonders for our health, physical and mental.
- comfypotato 4y agoThis isn’t new information. The standard of 3 MET exercise for 2.5-5 hours a week (16k steps at 2.5 mph is in the middle of that range) has been around for a while. It’s in multiple country’s exercise guidelines, which is about as formal as you can get. Comprehensive literature review has established that 2.5 hours a week at 3 MET reduces your risk of death by cardiovascular event by 70%, and there’s plenty of evidence for other benefits. The more you spread out the exercise the better.
- orcul 4y agoI walk ~ 9k steps every day, 20k during weekends. Besides the physical side, it does wonders for the mental state.
- inglor_cz 4y agoPersonal experience, N == 1... For the last 400 days, I walked at least 10 000 steps daily every day - in heat, frost, snow or rain. Sometimes much more, so the total sum exceeds 5 million steps. My immune system has improved visibly, but all that activity didn't have any measurable effect on my weight, which has fluctuated randomly around the same set point as in the years before. I wonder whether all the putative health effect stems from the immune system improvement.
- fortyseven 4y agoBut then you spend that extra time walking instead. Touche.
- pl90087 4y agoThat's not at all what the study "finds". It found a correlation between cardiovascular health and walking a certain amount a week. This does not at all suggest causation. I'm not nitpicking here. The most likely reason for this is that people who have a significantly more healthy life style have better cardiovascular health while also happening to move significantly more. Just getting up and walking 8k steps twice a week and otherwise having unhealthy lifestyle of the control group is possibly going to do nothing for your cardiovascular health. Claiming anything else needs much different evidence than the linked study. Edit: I'm not saying walking is bad for you. That's just as wrong. I'm saying just walking won't do much for you. Get a more healthy lifestyle. Cardiovascular health will follow and you'll notice that 16k steps or something comparable will look small compared to what your active/healthy lifestyle will do.
- surfsvammel 4y agoDoesn’t everyone working with science or medicine (be that research, teaching or journalism) learn that causation≠correlation? I don’t get it.
- pl90087 4y agoSome people also learn that they need a catchy/clickbaity headline to make money.
- exolymph 4y agoMost likely it's a feedback loop that goes both ways. Generally healthy —> activity is easier and more pleasurable —> exercise makes you healthier —> being healthy makes exercise more viscerally rewarding, and so on.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fwungy 4y agoI've had several fitness trackers that never convinced me I needed to exercise more. But when I paired that with a Constant Glucose Monitor, that made a huge impact. You don't need to push hard all the time, in fact most of your exercise should be in aerobic mode, very little in anaerobic high bpm range. Getting 45 minutes of moderate movement 4-5x/week will improve your glucose management. This is important because poor glucose management is a root cause of deterioration. Diabetics are the extreme example, but wild glucose swings are also causing deterioration in non-diabetics.
- theodric 4y agoI'd rather die
- fsckboy 4y agodoes "Walking 8k Steps Twice a Week Prolong Your Life" by more net time than it takes to walk 8K steps? cuz I'm not looking to have the part of my life spent not step walking reduced just so I can spend more time walking steps.