Is it true that … you need to take 10,000 steps a day to be healthy?

The idea that we need to walk 10,000 steps a day originated not in medical research but in a 1960s marketing campaign for a pedometer, says Jack McNamara, senior lecturer in clinical exercise physiology at the University of East London. The round number was easy to remember and the idea caught on, despite there being no scientific evidence for 10,000 steps as a specific threshold for health.

“When the research community looked into it, they found that there were health benefits, so it didn’t necessarily get thrown out as pseudoscience,” says McNamara.

Walking has been shown to benefit cardiovascular and cardiorespiratory health, as well as reducing the likelihood of some cancers. It also breaks up sedentary time, which is hugely harmful to health. “But when we look into it with systematic reviews and large-scale studies, there start to be diminishing returns the more steps you do.”

McNamara says the health improvement is huge when someone goes from a sedentary lifestyle, or 2,000 steps a day to 4,000. But going from 8,000 to 10,000 or 10,000 to 12,000 brings a much smaller benefit. “It still has some benefits, just not as many as people might expect.”

That’s not to say we should spend more time sitting down. If you enjoy walking, McNamara says, walk for as long as you like. The problem comes when you start chasing step counts for their own sake, particularly if you punish yourself for missing them.

If you’re already clocking up plenty of daily steps, he suggests switching some walking for higher-intensity exercise, if you can, to get greater health benefits. “Going for a run, or swimming at pace, or walking uphill, or power walking – something that gets your breathing up. You’d be so much better doing something that’s a little bit more vigorous.”