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Comment by Tenoke | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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