The truth about your step count - busting the myths!

Struggling to get 10,000 steps a day?

For many years, ten thousand steps has been touted as the goal when it comes to your daily step count. Do this many and you're golden.

Well, if you struggle to get that many in every day, I've got good news for you! A new meta-analysis published in the Lancet last month has identified that actually, you don't need to do that many.

The study was looking at the impact of walking on nine different health outcomes including: heart disease; cancer; type 2 diabetes; depression; and falls.

They also looked at the step counts implicated in the positive outcomes in each of the studies, in increments of 1,000 steps from 2,000 steps up to 12,000

10,000 is fabulous - but 7k works great!

Here's what they found:

Every step counts. Even at lower levels, walking is linked to chronic disease reduction and for every 1k steps added to your tally, you decrease your risks.

If you can make it to 7k steps daily (instead of 2k), you'll pretty much halve your risks of dying from anything within the next ten years. You'll also reduce your risks of type 2 diabetes by 14%.

What does 7k steps look like? Around 3-3.5 miles [4.8 - 5.6km]

Does it all have to be done in one lot? Nope. And in fact, taking several walks a day to get to your 7k is better than sitting down all day, and then walking 3.5 miles all in one hit.

Is there any point in doing more than 7k? Yes, absolutely! The research indicates that there are more benefits from higher step counts. 10k steps reduces risks of cancer by 10% (7k steps = 6%); and reduce your risk of dying from anything by 48%( vs 47% for 7k).

What about going cray-cray and doing 12k steps? Yes, more does equal better! This will cut cancer risk by 12% and overall death risk by 55%

So where did 10k come from?

Marketing! Yup - back in the 1960's a Japanese firm had a pedometer that they were selling and they called it the "Man-po kei" which translates as 10,000 steps.

Why that number? Because the Japanese character for it resembles a person walking