This Walking Trick Will Slash Your Mortality Risk by 39%

This One Daily Fix Changes Everything

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My Longevity Experiment
April 26, 2025

Why Your Daily Step Count Matters for Reducing Health Risks

You have probably heard that adults should aim for 10,000 daily steps. While this one-size-fits-all approach sends a clear message, it does not consider how varied human lifestyles and bodies are.

An international team of researchers recently found that even if you are highly sedentary, you can ward off the harmful effects of sitting by incorporating more steps into your day.

Sedentary lifestyles are becoming increasingly common, and you know they are linked to higher odds of dying from cardiovascular disease, a greater risk of cancer and diabetes, and a shorter lifespan. Those risks are lower for people who have higher step counts and walk at a faster pace.

Until now, it was unclear whether highly sedentary individuals like yourself could offset those alarming health risks by simply increasing daily steps.

The more steps you take, no matter how sedentary you are otherwise, the lower your risk of cardiovascular disease and even early death. If you have a desk job, you are not totally doomed, although researchers emphasize that you must still try to reduce sedentary time overall.

"This is by no means a get out of jail card for people who are sedentary for excessive periods of time," said population health scientist Matthew Ahmadi from the University of Sydney in Australia.

"However, it does hold an important public health message that all movement matters and that people can and should try to offset the health consequences of unavoidable sedentary time by upping their daily step count."

Ahmadi and his colleagues analyzed data from 72,174 volunteers in the UK Biobank, a large long-term dataset established in 2006. Each participant had about 6.9 years' worth of health data. To estimate physical activity, participants wore wrist accelerometers for seven days, tracking step count and sedentary time.

The median time spent sedentary was 10.6 hours per day. If you spend more than that sitting, you are considered to have high sedentary time.

Participants whose stats in the first two years might have been affected by poor health were excluded, meaning the findings apply to generally healthy individuals. It remains unclear whether participants with disabilities affecting step count were included.

The research found that between 9,000 and 10,000 daily steps were optimal to counteract a highly sedentary lifestyle. This level lowered incident cardiovascular disease risk by 21% and mortality risk by 39%.

Regardless of how sedentary you are, 50% of the benefits kicked in at around 4,000 to 4,500 daily steps.

"Any number of daily steps above the referent 2,200 steps per day was associated with lower mortality and incident CVD risk, for low and high sedentary time," Ahmadi and colleagues write.

"Accruing between 9,000 and 10,000 steps a day optimally lowered the risk of mortality and incident CVD among highly sedentary participants."

Your Call to Action for Daily Steps to Reduce Sedentary Health Risks

If you want to protect your heart health and longevity, you need to prioritize getting more daily steps. Aim to build up gradually, starting with small increases beyond 2,200 steps per day. Strive for at least 4,000 to 4,500 steps to see major health improvements and work toward 9,000 to 10,000 steps to maximize benefits. Even if your job keeps you deskbound, consistent movement can make a powerful difference. Start walking more today.

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