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Comment by reedf1 | Hacker News Reader

It is frustrating to link this to a unit as unspecific as "steps". It's like modern day "hands" or something. I would think it would be incredibly difficult to come to any conclusion before decoupling weight, terrain, shoe material, stride, altitude, etc.

In addition, I've seen people get more unhealthy after taking up the dogma of "steps" as they are now tracking their normal-everyday-routine and using it to justify their lack of medium/high-intensity exercise. "Bing! I closed a ring. I can skip the gym today."

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Steps doesn't seem to be a bad measurement as it naturally partially controls for height, and is easy to measure. Not to mention the results are there even when they account for "body mass index, alcohol drinking, smoking status, step intensity, and pre-existing comorbidities" and more. Sure, the results will be noisy but you should still expect to see the effect with a large sample size which this has.

Also, I'm somewhat doubtful that it's common for people to do less exercise after starting to count steps and if anything I'd expect a positive correlation between people becoming more active by walking more and picking up other forms of exercise.

Conditions still matter.

Is a step while out shopping (at around 2,500' elevation) comparable to a step while hiking last Saturday (average something like 500' average elevation, 2,000' of climb, but with about 30 pounds of gear--admittedly, probably 25 pounds by the time I was done), or hiking last summer (same gear, but an average elevation approaching 10,000' and 3,500' of climb)??

(And, yes, I think those first numbers are accurate--a decent portion of it was below sea level, it only started climbing after I had crossed the valley.)

>Is a step while out shopping (at around 2,500' elevation) comparable to a step while hiking

No, but the main other measurement you can use - distance - doesn't account for that either. What does account for it is 'step intensity' which they did control for.

To me the real yardstick is what it does to your heart rate, but I'm not aware of any tracker that records heart rate other than during activities.

My Garmin watch does, at least occasionally. I have it synced to the Health app on my phone. I think it does it more often during recorded activities, but there's still a baseline the rest of the time.

Where does height come into play if it was not controlled for

If the study were asking for distance instead of steps, then taller people will naturally go further in fewer steps. But, at least according to these studies, it is the act of stepping that improves health and not traveling distance.

My apologies, I think in phrased that poorly.

The parent comment I replied to stated:

>Steps doesn't seem to be a bad measurement as it naturally partially controls for height

My question is why would height matter at all in this context if it were not controlled for? Is height associated with mortality?

Height is associated with a lot of things including mortality, yes. But more importantly, as mentioned other easy to measure metrics like distance would ignore that it takes different levels of exertion (due to different height and stride length) to cover a given distance while steps accounts for that to a larger extent.

So following this rationale, wouldn't steps naturally be different with different exertion with different heights? Doesn't seem like it really controls for height from my perspective

There is a very good reason for this. When you are in charge of public health policy, you need measures that are easy to implement by anyone, easy to check, don't involve any complexity or specific objects. That is also why in another popular study[0] push-ups were used as a marker instead of much more precise markers such as blood pressure etc.

[0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/more-push-ups...

I think the idea of counting steps is more aimed at truly sedentary people, or those who aren't going to the gym at all. Based on the hypothesis that some exercise is better than no exercise at all.

When I was doing 15k steps a day, once I had gotten past about 10k, I started just naturally speeding up to try to fit more steps into my lunch break. That at least added some mild cardio, which led me to start tackling stairs. I was working in the Detroit Renaissance centre, which has 4 towers with 39 floors and 1 with 73. Before losing that job I was beating 15k steps and 39 floors every weekday, which definitely helped my overall fitness level!

Very cool, and super good use of your time

The reason the unit is "steps" is there are now popular inexpensive gadgets that count "steps" so it is a unit for which we are accumulating sufficiently large datasets to carry out such studies. Just like the best camera is the one you have with you, the best scientific data is the kind that is obtainable in large datasets.

Yeah, although those gadgets don't produce accurate data for everyone. My wife's insurance offers rewards for being active so I gave her my old Fitbit when I upgraded. Surprise--she has more "steps" than I do. Nope, she does a lot of things with her hands that register as "steps." (She's not cheating, that's simply how she lives.)

Steps seem to be far more specific than, say, distance. And all the data suggests incorporating walking into your daily life is better than sitting around all day and compensating with visits for the gym, so the people you mock are arguably right.

Yeah, I'm not sure that high intensity workouts are the healthiest choice. I think people do them because they are fun, and short term they do make you fit, but a lot of high intensity activities have harmful effects on your body in the long term.

Is there any like evidence of this? Beyond risks that may be associated with injury if not done correctly. My google search shows mostly positive long term effects.

I very much didn't intend to mock them, in fact I care very much about them, I used to be one of them!

Here is showing the efficacy of MVPA in reducing all-cause mortality. It's notably effective, and should be done in combination with a healthy amount of walking: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25844882/

If you only do one or the other you are effectively trying to p-hack your way to health, as these are likely highly associated datasets. Those who live long are likely to be doing both and living a so-called healthy lifestyle.

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