We don't really need to take 10k steps a day for health | Hacker News Reader

We don't really need to take 10k steps a day for health

nytimes.com

34 pointsvinni244 comments

So the conclusion was benefits start to plateau around: for women ~7500 and men ~8000 steps. Truly 10k not a bad estimate. So the answer is yes roughly, get out and be active.

The point is 10000 steps is not scientifically grounded.

But it still isn’t bad advice. To be honest the difference between 8.5k and 10k is not that much (maybe 10 to 15 minutes if you are on a walk anyway).

I also think that 10k can serve as a psychological goal.

Anyhow recently I heard a someone say: Don’t become a slave to the metric, the glass is half full. If you did 7k steps, that’s still better than 3k. It’s not about fulfilling the 10k, more about searching for opportunities where you can get your steps „for free“. Ordering food? Maybe get it as take away. Using the elevator to go to the 11th floor? Walk up the first two or three.

To reference the top comment right now… I’d imagine if you are looking at the metric at all, you’ve already lost. This, coming from someone who’s mother was walking 10-20k steps per day for decades, and seeing them fully stop walking after a few weeks with a Fitbit.

Why would the fitbit make her stop walking and how do you know she did 10-20k steps before the fitbit... And I have more questions after you answer this one :)

The steps are a proxy metric for activity, you can correlate it with how you feel or with the amount of backpain you experience in the evening. I don't see how I'm loosing looking at this metric.

Could not disagree more. Yeah, yeah, stop and smell the roses and all that, I get it. But there are a tonne of people, my mother included, who are spurred on greatly by the need to fill out the rings on their Apple watch. It's the thing that gets them out of the door, the metric. We bought the watch for her hopeful she would actually use it, and not leave it buried somewhere in a drawer, and it's worked an absolute treat. She's walked more, and more strenuously, since she got the watch. She loves sharing the graphs of her hikes/walks, and the km covered.

Even for me, as much as I hate giving away my medical data, I love compiling GPX files of hikes I've been on, or keeping streaks of commuting by bike everyday.

Metrics are great, and I don't think it's as simple as a dichotomy between being all about number crunching, vs all about feeling the grass under your feet. One can do both.

This claim is factually true, for some version of truth, but also harmful.

Someone reading "10k steps is not scientifically grounded" might think "well then screw walking, I'll just watch TV", whereas the actual truth is "It's not 10k, more like 9k". Sure, 10k might not be scientifically grounded, but it's close enough and has a big enough benefit that it's not worth refining the estimate.

If those are averages, it makes sense a lot of people will be below average, and more steps would be OK.

I just knew it! It’s entirely possible that 1k steps is enough for me. :D

A snippet of data from myself (year: steps/day)

2018: 9411

2019: 9250

2020: 9933

2021: 9277

In my case, pandemic changed absolutely nothing in my lifestyle. I live in major North American city FYI.

"Health" in the article's headline seems to be narrowly scoped as a synonym for "avoiding premature death". There's no mention of the mental health benefits of being outside.

The article is timely, for me. After spending most of the pandemic getting ever more inactive, on May 31st I decided I had to do something about it and that 10,000 steps a day (not on average, but each and every day) in June was going to happen.

The first few days were a real slog, but from then on I found myself increasing my distance and seeking out newer routes each day – because it was making me happy, regardless of the physical benefits (immediate or future). I could have started running again, to get the steps quicker – but that's the opposite of what I wanted, which was to be outside for longer!

This is the reason people shouldn't take advice from popular media

While it may be true that the figure of 10,000 steps per day is fairly hand-wavey, headlines like this can be counter-productive since they can encourage people to abandon the overall goal of being more active.

What's interesting to me is how governments spend millions on public health messages (in the UK: "five a day" fruit and veg, recent TV campaigns about lung and bowel cancer) while messages like 10,000 steps and "eight glasses of water" take off from the grass-roots.

From an article on The Atlantic website [1] concerning the origin of the goal of 10,000 steps per day:

> Based on conversations she’s had with Japanese researchers, [professor of epidemiology I-Min] Lee believes that name was chosen for the product because the character for “10,000” looks sort of like a man walking. [2]

If the character for 5,000 or 50,000 happened to have looked like a walking person, we might have had that number of steps as our daily or weekly goal. It's remarkable that the actual optimum of steps for health benefits is that close to a heuristic from the 1960s.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/10000-ste...

[2] http://www.kanjidamage.com/kanji/85-10000-%E4%B8%87

I strained both my feet during one of the lockdowns (a period of inactivity followed by too intense activity). I have been unable to walk well since then. I used to work full time in the office making about 12k steps a day (+ about 10 km of biking). I never had any issues but now that I can't walk well I often make about 2-3k steps a day and I am starting to have pain in many places in my body. When I take painkillers and go to the office, I make about 5500 steps and I feel better after just a day already.

My point is. Buy a tracker, make some notes about how you feel (or just, develop a feeling for the numbers by checking them regularly). I guess for me the truth is: Prolonged periods of over 10k steps are fine. Long periods of around 2000-3000 steps are detrimental to my back and other parts of my body. But your body may be different and you may for example move more while sitting.

I'm trying to be creative in moving around now while working from home. It is much harder and requires more discipline then being in the office but the alternative is slow decay of my body. In any case, I find 10k to be a nice goal, call it unscientific but I bet that a proper scientific method would come to a similar estimate.

Btw, I'm actually pretty sure that my Amazit Bip U Pro does not even count my steps exactly, but it's a good proxy for "activity", imho, as 10k steps is a good proxy for: be (more) active.

Look up Heart Rate Variability.

If walking takes a toll on your body you should consider adding strength exercises (push-ups until they become easy, then bench press, bodyweight squats until they become easy then weighted squats, deadlifts etc.).

I also experienced hip pain and knee pain from walking and I no longer have any pain (after getting stronger) even when walking 30km per day during my active vacations.

I have trouble understanding how so many people limit themselves to 4k or 5k steps a day, as the article suggests. What do they do all day?

We write code, unfortunately.

WFH gives me the opportunity to be on a long streak of 100 steps a day.

Drive instead of walk.

For the past year and a half I have mostly been staring at a computer and typing a lot. I went from a "road warrior" who used a tiny laptop to do all of my work to someone who sits in a chair all day and works exclusively on a desktop. I only need to walk from my bed to my desk, with most of my exercise coming from going downstairs (I live in an apartment where the bedrooms are over the living room and kitchen) to make food or pick up deliveries (which then involves climbing back up the stairs: the real challenge). I go outside to take out the trash (at night: the day is feeling stranger and stranger of a time to be outside). I have gained 80 pounds ("and counting"). I dunno: other than that I expect to die soon from this lifestyle :/, it isn't hard or particularly boring? ...and again: this is coming from someone who used to spend most of his time traveling to convergences giving talks in front of large audiences and swimming through crowds; there are truly an infinite number of things that one can do without ever having to even leave bed (and that's even if you ignore sleeping, which is like holding down the fast forward button on life ;P).

>there are truly an infinite number of things that one can do without ever having to even leave bed

I don't think I'd be able to count over 10

Using a phone in bed already covers more than 10 things

I have to actively choose to go for a long walk in order to reach the 10k mark.

Taking a bus, riding a bike, going into the subway. It doesn’t add up to a lot.

Why care about steps when you're cycling?

it's serious question

It’s a good question and the poor answer is: Nothing is counting my cycling.

Yeah it's a bit of a gap in the most popular wearables, I feel. Many can do it, but the pedometer function is typically automatic or "always on" while cycling tracking requires some fiddling. Some Garmin wearables (and others I'm sure) can do "smart" activity recognition, automatically determining if you're walking, cycling, lifting weights, etc. with variable accuracy.

Your clock does, kinda, ain't that enough?

Bone and joint health. Legs have evolved for impact and weight-bearing, they need it to remain healthy. The optimum dose is unique to the individual. Too little is easier to achieve than too much, for most people.

Keywords: osteopoenia, sarcopaenia, balance.

> What do they do all day?

The only reason I leave the house is to buy groceries, basically.

Sit at a computer for work all day so that you can sit at a computer for fun all night.

My commute is 20ft, this increases by as much as 30% if i get out the other side of the bed.

I get a 30 minute walk every day in lockdown but you can only trudge aimlessly around the same grey/brown industrial estate so many times before losing the will.

I take trips to other neighborhoods for my walks at least once a week. It helps to shift things up. Also finding a largish park and walk around it.

> I have trouble understanding[...] What do they do all day?

Sedentary activities? Look at your chair or couch or bed, and consider all the things you can do there.

Ever had a lazy sunday? Got out of bed late, watched some tv on the couch, played some Xbox, ordered in pizza, made some phonecalls, browsed some on the internet, went to bed?

Can easily be just 500 steps in the house on a day like that.

Replace that with working from home and not doing anything after work but the above (netflix, xbox etc) and you get the same thing.

To get to 4-5k steps you'd need to actively do something. Most people walk about 6k steps per hour, so to get to 4-5k you'd need about 40-50 minutes of walking. Say that day you visit a friend or do groceries and spend 15 minutes in the store but drive to/from the store and to your friend, you're not even hitting that 40-50 minutes of pure walking.

It's easy to walk 40-50min on a day, it's also easy not to, depending on your lifestyle.

I've found the metric reduces the brain-relaxation benefit of going for a walk. Over lockdown, I adopted the habit of physically wandering randomly around neighbourhoods and parks. I used to do this in the woods behind my house as a kid, so I figured it might help with my mental health. Lo and behold: my tendency to wander on wikipedia or TVtropes decreased dramatically.

A key to this is for me to be unconcerned with path, duration, or outcome. So I don't think about the 10k.

https://archive.is/5wxjY

I have a dog so I take around 21k steps per day. I don't understand how people I know manage to walk less than 4k steps per day which some do sometimes.

Altough, I moved to a country house and every time I need to go to the fridge for examples I basically take 2-3 times the steps I did in my apartment before. When I need to get eggs I need to go outside, walk to the chickens and retrieve them.

Small things like that adds up and now I more often than not take 150k steps per week. I think this is good for my health.

My apartment is 500sqft and I also have a dog - I've occasionally been under 5k steps. If my partner takes the dog out and there's no need to leave the house and it's raining (I live in Scotland, its often raining) then I can be under 5k steps! Not everyone is the same or has the same priorities; a 15 minute stroll in the park right next to my flay clears my mind as much as a 45 minute gym session occasionally, and I find enjoyment in things like cooking, playing guitar.

doing things like standing at your desk help as well

You don't sound like a typical person. Not many people go to their chickens when they want an egg.

Lots of us work from rather small homes and haven't been allowed outside much in 18 months.

Your heart rate needs to go over a certain threshold in order to see physical benefits of exercise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_rate#/media/File:Exercis...

But this has little to do with back pain for example or other muscle aches or deterioration of tendons. You are talking about aerobic condition, you are ignoring that the movement apparatus of us human is a "use it or loose it" type of apparatus.

True. But you also need cardiovascular health. So cardio exercise > walking.

(Unless you know of a way to do cardio exercise without moving your tendons and muscles.)

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