The Golden Steps

Don’t be a slouch! Get off that couch!

This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.

Seriously, how many hours do you spend sitting down? Our lives are practically glued to chairs. In the car, at work… Most of it is inevitable. But how does it affect our health?

Enter Matthew Ahmadi and team from the University of Sydney.

They studied more than seventy-two THOUSAND individuals. For one week, they tracked steps and sedentary hours. How? With a smartwatch, of course!

Seven years later, they checked in on the participants’ health. Results? They found that those who walked about TEN THOUSAND steps every day were significantly healthier! Those who walked this much had a forty percent reduced risk of mortality. They also had twenty-one percent fewer instances of cardiovascular diseases than those who walked less.

Every step counts! But that golden range may help compensate for our chairbound lifestyles.

So… Close your Apple Activity rings and fire up that Step Counter! Future you will thank you!


Reference: Ahmadi, M. N., Rezende, L. F. M., Ferrari, G., Del Pozo Cruz, B., Lee, I. M., & Stamatakis, E. (2024). Do the associations of daily steps with mortality and incident cardiovascular disease differ by sedentary time levels? A device-based cohort study. British journal of sports medicine, 58(5), 261–268. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2023-107221