According to the World Health Organization (WHO), you should take at least 10,000 steps per day to combat a sedentary lifestyle and preserve your health. Other more recent studies have modulated these ardor (10,000 steps is still the equivalent of 7.5 km of walking) and calculated that setting a daily goal of 7000 steps would be enough.
But according to researchers at the University of Sydney (Australia), it’s not just the number of steps that counts when it comes to aging in good shape. The speed at which we walk may be just as important for health as the number of steps taken.
It is better to walk quickly than to walk a lot
For this study, scientists followed 78,500 people aged 40 to 79 with wearable trackers to track their daily step counts. They then compared the figures with their state of health 7 years later. Only those who were free of cardiovascular disease, cancer, or dementia at baseline and disease-free during the first two years of the study were included in the final evaluation.
Although the number of steps is easily understood and now widely used to track one’s activity level, few connected watch wearers think about accelerating the pace of their steps. However, according to this study, a faster pace of steps (such as brisk walking) showed health benefits that surpass those provided by the number of steps.
The main conclusions of this study:
- Each 2,000 steps gradually reduces the risk of premature death, cardiovascular disease and cancer, by 8 to 11%, up to approximately 10,000 steps per day.
- Taking 9,800 steps per day is linked to a 50% reduced risk of dementia, but the risk is already reduced by 25% with just 3,800 steps per day.
- Step intensity or faster pace showed beneficial associations for all outcomes (dementia, heart disease, cancer, and death) beyond total daily steps.
“The take-home message here is that, for protective health benefits, people could not only ideally aim for 10,000 steps per day, but also aim to walk faster,” said Dr. Matthew Ahmadi, a researcher at the University of Sydney and co-lead author of this study.
The 10 cities in France where we walk the most
In 2023, the designers of Macadam, a pedometer application that rewards its users for encouraging them to walk, conducted a study on 300,000 users and compiled a list of the cities in France where people walk the most.
Without (much) surprise, it was Paris which came at the top of this list with an average of 9,692 steps each day. The capital is in fact the city where people are least dependent on the car, and the changes in metro lines allow you to take many steps, while using public transport. We then find the cities of:
- Lyon: 9188 steps per day on average
- Lille: 9059 steps
- Strasbourg: 9031 steps
- Marseille: 8873 steps
- Toulouse: 8787 steps
- Nantes: 8612 steps
- Montpellier: 8479 steps
- Bordeaux: 8430 steps
- Nice: 8223 pa
Source : Prospective Associations of Daily Step Counts and Intensity With Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease Incidence and Mortality and All-Cause MortalityJama internal medicine, September 2022
Source: www.topsante.com
