Overview
- An Annals of Internal Medicine study of adults averaging 8,000 steps or fewer per day found stronger risk reductions when steps were accumulated in longer bouts rather than many very short walks.
- Participants whose steps mostly came in walks longer than 15 minutes had about 80% lower all-cause mortality and roughly 70% lower cardiovascular disease incidence than those whose steps came mainly in walks under five minutes.
- The association was most pronounced among the least active participants, particularly those taking fewer than 5,000 daily steps.
- Researchers used wrist accelerometers for about one week to capture step patterns and analyzed groups with similar total step counts, noting the findings are observational and may be influenced by unmeasured factors.
- Related research reports benefits from modest targets such as reaching 4,000 steps on some days for older women, and emerging work suggests combining step counts with heart-rate data may better gauge disease risk.