Your competent? doctor better get you recovered enough to do whatever number of steps you want.
Oh no, your doctors completely fucking failed at that task, and you haven't fired them yet?!
Well, there's all these other numbers for walking that your doctor already told you about, right? Choose one.
Other walking prevention items:
My numbers for steps.
10,000 Steps A Day? How Many You Really Need To Boost Longevity - 4,400
This one suggests 8900 steps a day:
Can Exercise Protect Against Alzheimer's?
Exactly How Many Steps You Need to Take a Day to Not Gain Weight - 15,000
Every 2,000 steps a day could help keep premature death at bay
Scientists Reveal the Right Number of Steps to Walk to Stay Healthy (Hint: It's Not 10K)4 min read
World Walking Day: Experts Recommend 30-Minute Daily Walk To Prevent Cancer, Stroke, Others October 2024
The latest here:
Here’s What Happens to Your Brain When You Take Just 3,000 Steps a Day, According to Harvard Research
Science doesn’t back 10,000 steps a day. To keep your brain sharp, new Harvard research says aim for this goal instead.
EXPERT OPINION BY JESSICA STILLMAN, CONTRIBUTOR, INC.COM @ENTRYLEVELREBEL
Photo: Getty Images
Hopefully you’ve heard by now that there is exactly zero science behind the idea that you should take 10,000 steps a day. That goal actually originated with a Japanese marketing campaign. Repeated studies have since revealed that, while it is certainly better to move more rather than less, there is no particular benefit to taking 10,000 steps a day, roughly equivalent to five miles of foot travel.
Science is clear that 10,000 steps isn’t the magic number. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t another magic number out there. A new study out of Harvard Medical School recently published in Nature Medicine looked not at overall health, but at the specific impact of walking on keeping our brains sharp as we age.
It found another more modest number of steps a day can significantly reduce your risk of cognitive decline and developing Alzheimer’s. And it’s a lot lower than 10,000.
The magic number of steps a day for slower brain aging
To help figure out the effect of walking on the health of aging brains, the scientists analyzed data on nearly 300 adults aged 50 to 90 from the Harvard Aging Brain Study. At the start of the project, all the participants had normal cognitive function. Their activity levels were periodically tracked with a pedometer. The scientists also followed up with regular cognitive tests over 14 years.
For a select group of 172 participants, regular PET scans looked for the buildup of proteins in the brain that indicates Alzheimer’s.
What did the scientists discover? If a participant’s brain was free of early markers of Alzheimer’s at the start of the study, how much they walked didn’t make much difference. This lucky group usually maintained good cognitive function throughout the study no matter how many steps they got in.
But for participants who showed very early signs of cognitive decline at the start of the study, walking made a big difference. Moving more was associated with less buildup of problematic proteins in the brain and fewer signs of cognitive decline. And study subjects didn’t need to hit anything near 10,000 steps a day to see benefits.
Just 3,000-5,000 steps a day held off mental decline by three years. Upping that to between 5,000 and 7,500 steps a day slowed mental decline by seven years. Above that level, extra steps didn’t seem to matter much.
That’s good news for older folks who might struggle to meet the popular guideline of 10,000 steps a day. “The very encouraging takeaway is that even a little bit of exercise seems to help,” commented Harvard Medical School researcher and study co-author Wai-Ying Wendy Yau to Nature.
Other research on step goals
It’s always good practice to be leery of putting too much weight on any single study, even if it’s out of Harvard and published in a highly respected journal. But as biological psychologist Eef Hogervorst pointed out on The Conversation, this wasn’t the first study to show quite doable amounts of walking can have big effects on how well your brain ages.
“A U.K. study of 1,139 people over 50 found that those who were moderately to vigorously active had a 34-50 percent reduction in dementia risk when followed over eight to 10 years,” she reports. “A larger 2022 U.K. study tracked 78,430 people for seven years using wrist accelerometers. It found a 25 percent reduction in dementia risk with just 3,800 steps daily, rising to 50 percent at 9,800 steps.”
That’s strong evidence that moderate exercise is linked with slower brain aging. Still, there are plenty of questions left to answer. Adults who walk more might also sleep better or eat more healthily, for instance. That could help slow their mental decline. Fully untangling exactly how physical activity and dementia are related will require more research.
How to tweak your daily walk for a sharper brain
Still, there is a reasonable takeaway for middle-aged entrepreneurs and others hoping to keep their brains sharp as long as possible. What’s clear is that even a little walking every day helps you stay sharp. So don’t let the old advice to aim for 10,000 steps a day put you off. That’s a great goal if you can manage it, but even a little exercise is a lot better than nothing.
As the scientists write in their paper, 3,000 to 5,000 steps a day may be a “more attainable physical activity goal for older sedentary individuals at high risk of cognitive decline.” Just 3,000 steps a day sounds modest. But the latest science suggests it really does make a difference for brain health.
Tweaking how you walk might help you squeeze even more benefits from your daily stroll too. Other recent studies found varying the pace at which you walk, slowing down for a chat or to admire the view and then challenging yourself with a brisker pace for a while, increases its health benefits.
Consider where you walk as well. “Getting outside, particularly in nature, may be especially beneficial for preventing dementia — possibly because it improves mood and sleep while reducing isolation, all dementia risk factors. The combination of physical movement, natural light exposure, and social interaction when walking outdoors may create multiple protective effects that complement each other,” Hogervorst notes.
Put all of this science together and a clear, though still evolving picture emerges. Entirely doable amounts of walking really do seem to make a difference for brain aging. Don’t let the usual recommendation of 10,000 steps a day spook or dishearten you. Just a little walking a day goes a long way to keeping you mentally sharp for longer.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
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