
Do you really need 10,000 steps a day? - brandonb
https://blog.cardiogr.am/2016/02/12/do-you-really-need-10000-steps-a-day-2/
======
newdaynewuser
I got into 10,000 steps craze, thanks in part to my company providing Fitbits.
I was not really a health nut, just 3 days a week at gym, lifting and cardio.
I had a bit of muscle definition. Gym was just something I did like brushing
teeth. I didn't focus my life around it.

Due to incentives and competition among co-workers, I got into Fitbit
seriously. While it was fun, but after a few months, not only I lost some
definition but also gained weight. I was expecting to lose muscle mass but
didn't know that 10000 steps spread out throughout day were not enough
activity.

Now I realize Fitbits are great for extremely unhealthy or lazy people. But
those of us who been working out without any devices should stay away from any
such devices. And not change your workout routines.

It is too late for me, now I cannot workout without a device and some nice
charts. I ended up getting a HRM based device. I like the charts it provides
but I was happy using mirror to judge how much I needed to workout. And I
didn't need any external motivation back then.

~~~
_lex
Yeah, something that most people don't know is that extrinsic motivation
dissolves intrinsic motivation.

see [http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/10/how-rewards-can-backfire-
an...](http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/10/how-rewards-can-backfire-and-reduce-
motivation.php)

This means that fitbit will leave you as either a fitbit addict (if you stick
with it), or as someone who's less healthy than you would have been otherwise
(if you don't, because now you'll exercise less on your own).

~~~
eru
I heard that these studies are, like all social studies, to be taken with a
grain of salt. They don't replicate well.

~~~
runarberg
I don't know about that. It should be fairly easy to study (and hence
replicate).

1\. Find a group of animals (preferably humans, but dogs, rats, pigeons, etc.
should also work just fine).

2\. Target a specific unnecessary behavior pattern (hobby) that all individual
engage in.

3\. Measure the baseline rate of that activity.

4\. Introduce a reward:

4a. For a randomly selected subset the reward follows imminently the targeted
behavior.

4b. For the rest they'll receive the "reward" equally often but at a time
independent of the targeted behavior.

5\. Drop the reward.

6\. Let some time pass.

7\. Measure the drop/increase in the behavior from the baseline measure.

\---

[edit] format.

------
brandonb
Hey all—OP here.

I'm working on developing Cardiogram, the Apple Watch app from which this data
is derived, and working with UCSF cardiology doing machine learning on heart
rate data.

Feel free to ask any questions here!

~~~
2sk21
I was motivated to download your app based on your article so clearly you did
a good job explaining the idea :-) I have to say that the Apple Watch has had
a profound impact on my health. For the past 7 years, I work out at a gym
almost every morning. However I did not realize that I was excessively
sedentary for the rest of the day until I started wearing the watch. I now
force myself to move around a lot more and sit less.

~~~
CamatHN
Relating to this, does anyone know any good Android apps that record such
data?

~~~
brandonb
You can sign up for our (upcoming) Android Wear beta on the homepage:
[https://cardiogr.am](https://cardiogr.am)

------
HorizonXP
Great summary of your findings.

I've been wearing a Fitbit Charge HR since last June, and I definitely do not
reach 10k steps daily. However, I've noticed that on days I hit the gym and do
weight lifting, my caloric burn easily tops 3300, while on days where I'm lazy
and just working on my laptop, I barely break 2100.

As a rule, I typically do not do any cardiovascular exercise. I think, I do
not know for sure, the Fitbit is better suited for measuring cardiovascular
activities, so I'm not sure how or why it's adjusting my caloric burn on my
gym days. Maybe it's looking at my heart rate and extrapolating?

Anyway, I'd be very much interested in some kind of fitness tracker that can
provide better estimates on caloric burn. That coupled with calorie
counting/recording of meals is what will really help me shed this weight.

~~~
randycupertino
I've always thought the killer healthcare app would be some sort of way to
automatically track calorie and nutritional macro intake without manual data
entry. No idea how that would actually work, though.

~~~
leereeves
Great idea. Perhaps an AI that recognizes what we eat from a cell phone photo
and tracks nutrition.

Sounds possible at least for prepackaged and restaurant/fast food.

~~~
aledalgrande
I doubt it would be feasible:

1) food appearance gets changed a lot when cooked and plated

2) a photo would not be enough to recover the volume of food in metric scale

~~~
leereeves
Good points, but did you miss the discussion nearby? It seems someone already
made a plate with cameras with object recognition to identify food and 3
scales to determine the volume.

> [http://www.fastcoexist.com/3045810/world-changing-
> ideas/this...](http://www.fastcoexist.com/3045810/world-changing-ideas/this-
> smart-plate-tells-you-how-many-calories-youre-eating-and-whether-y)

~~~
aledalgrande
Yep, missed that!

------
schwap
I imagine the popularity of '10,000 steps a day' was mainly driven by how
cheap/easy it was to measure steps. Nowadays with smart watches or dedicated
fitness trackers it's finally becoming possible to come up with better metrics
that can be widely used.

------
arprocter
I walk quickly with long strides, so steps always seemed like a bit of a
kludge - someone with shorter legs would presumably take more steps to travel
the same distance as me, but would that necessarily make them 'healthier' than
me?

In high school we had a cardio class and the requirement was 'get your heart
rate above xxx BPM' \- it would take less effort for out of shape folks to get
above the threshold

~~~
csours
I'm not sure if this is a semantic difference, but how do you know it would
take less 'effort' to get the heart rate up for out of shape people? I think
'less intensive exercise' would be better phrasing.

Heart rate is a pretty good proxy for 'effort'. As you get in better shape,
your body is more efficient at all sorts of tasks, including fitness
challenges, so to get your heart rate higher, you have to increase the
intensity of the activity.

~~~
vacri
> _how do you know it would take less 'effort' to get the heart rate up for
> out of shape people?_

It's a staple of sports medicine. Fit people start out with a lower heart
rate, and unfit people's heart rate rises much more rapidly with exercise. Get
the two to climb a set of stairs - the fit person won't notice it, the unfit
person will be slightly out of breath and have a noticeably higher heart rate
(in some cases, may now even be able to feel their own pulse).

To reach beats-per-minute X, a fit person starts lower and has a longer ramp-
up.

~~~
eru
Yes. I think the grandparent comment was disputing `effort', not intensity of
exercise.

~~~
csours
Right, I'm saying that when you are out of shape it takes more physiological
and psychological effort to reach the same level of exercise intensity as a
fit person.

------
antirez
I and my wife both have 50-53 bpm at rest, mine certain periods were 48 and
doctor demanded to do an echocardiogram even after I explained I do a lot of
sport. Everything was fine. Btw TLDR, we got those bpms doing crossfit 3/4
times-week (4/5 my wife), we rarely walk at all. I switched to crossfit
recently (a few months), before I did powerlifting + cardio for years which
provides very similar results from the POV of heart rate, AFAIK. Btw I think
my level of cardio fitness is improving with CrossFit compared to PL.

~~~
newdaynewuser
My RHR averages between 52 to 55 bpm. I always heard that unless you are an
elite athlete, your HR should not be below 60 bpm. So I brought it up with my
doctor and he told me to not worry about it. I wonder if there are other
markers which would indicate if further testing is needed or not.

~~~
davegardner
My RHR is around 40. When my GP discovered it he ran a few tests (ECG and
echocardiogram) that were all clear and then sent me to a cardiac
electrophysiologist. He basically said that as long as I wasn't experiencing
any of the symptoms of sinus bradycardia (fainting, dizziness, fatigue, etc)
then this is just a normal heart rate for my body and I didn't have anything
to worry about.

------
erikb
Hm, what about the other goals of walking 10k steps? I started walking to lose
weight and found, thanks to all these smart devices, that when I walk more
than 15k steps I actually drop in weight. Since I'm on the very unhealthy part
of the scale it really helps a lot to improve my health.

What I found is that the motivational gain from having data is quite low
though. For a month maybe it was good motivation, but if you don't have
someone to specifically compete against then you just stop caring.

------
aivosha
I dont buy the intense workouts as better alternative to more "slow burn"
workouts. I'm a runner and I used to do fast 5k runs 3-4 times a week. I would
feel very tired at the end of each run, just depleted. Didnt wanna do anything
else but just relax. Had headaches too and most likely due to burning carbs at
fast rate (intense workout, high heart rate) and basically depleting my carb
reserves, which i think are about 2500 calories in a person. Then I stumbled
upon a book, i think here on HN, called Slow Burn by Stu Mittleman [1]. It
changed the way i look at the cardio exercise dramatically ! You wanna be
healthy - burn fat (slow pace, long time, low HR). You wanna be fit - burn
carbs (fast pace, short runs, high HR). These are very different goals as you
can imagine ! So which one do you want really ?

[1] [http://www.amazon.ca/Slow-Burn-Stu-
Mittleman/dp/0062736744](http://www.amazon.ca/Slow-Burn-Stu-
Mittleman/dp/0062736744)

Edit: Just wanted to add, now I run 10k easily, feel great after each run and
dont have any headaches and I think, though i dont really care, i loose weight
too. Just keeping the HR under control during the run, thats all you need.

~~~
kevinwang
Can one be fit and healthy?

~~~
aivosha
the book is by ultra-marathon runner, so yes you can be, but if you are just
"casual" runner, you probably wanna be healthy first. the point is you need to
teach your body to burn fat and intensify the training slowly by getting
"fitter", meaning you will run faster in the same HR zone as before - the zone
that is indicator of your body burning fat.

------
didibus
This simply looked at resting heart rate. Sure, you could do better then 10k
step a day to improve that, but this does not mean there are no other benefits
to 10k steps. As the article points out, there's no study of it.

For me personally, I find walking is fun, and simple to integrate in my
routine. It burns an extra 300 cal a day, and forces me to spread my activity
throughout the day. That last one is important, because there is a growing
number of evidence that inactivity is very bad for you, and that exercise is
not enough to counter the effect. What you need is to decrease your periods of
inactivity. Finally, walking is very safe and easy on your body.

That's not to say any other alternate type of activity wouldn't be just as
good, or better. When it comes to exercise though, anything is better then
nothing, so if 10k works for you, keep at it.

------
the_economist
After I got my iPhone 6 and started monitoring my steps using its pedometer, I
started walking 10,000 steps every single day. After a few months, I noticed
that my body was quite a bit more toned and muscular. Great benefit to the
steps!

------
AdmiralAsshat
Well that's good to know. I literally can't get to 10,000 steps during a
normal day unless I make it a goal during my lunch break to run down to the
gym and walk around 4 miles on the treadmill. Since my walking speed is
3.2/3.5 mph, this can't be done leisurely. My only hope for getting to 10,000
is that I'll do the 3.5 or so at the gym and then hopefully be required to run
to the grocery store later in the evening so that I can be forced to walk
more.

The fitness tracker is supposed to be a motivator, but instead when I see that
I'm only at 7-8k per day even after an hour-long walk, it feels more like a
fat shamer.

~~~
weinzierl
I have a typical _in front of the screen job_ , just walking to and from work
and from meeting to meeting. I found that 10000 steps were not much of a
problem for a typical work day, if I consequently walked. No elevator, no bus.

10000 steps should be about 4 to 5 miles or 6 to 8 km. I always thought this
is realistic for a typical work day, but your comment made me thinking that
maybe my tracker is just off. I should compare it to a GPS log one day.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Most people don't walk to work. I live eight miles away from the office, so
that's not really an option for me.

~~~
Jedd
Conveniently buses tend to stop at multiple places - not just your home and
your office.

So, assuming your interest is in walking more (but not necessarily 16 miles a
day) you could perhaps walk a little way, and catch the bus from a different
stop. And/or perhaps get off the bus a few stops before your office and walk
the last bit. You can adjust to taste depending on how you're feeling, how
late / early you're running, whether it's raining, and so on.

------
gthtjtkt
Everything about modern fitness is fascinating. We have access to more data
about health and exercise than ever before, all kinds of personalized fitness
trackers, calorie counters, meal planners, personal trainers, exercise
routines and equipment. Yet somehow our society still seems to be getting
fatter and more out of shape every year.

What is going on!?

~~~
jasonshen
A big reason why is that information is not enough. There are multiple 100B+
industries that are dedicated to driving sedentary and calorie-increasing
activities (TV, gaming, fast food, soda, beer). There is far less effort
devoted to getting people to exert more physical effort.

Think about how the only real way most white collar workers exert ourselves is
through "exercising". Aka moving around for the express purpose of burning
calories.

------
ChemicalWarfare
I think this is more or less common knowledge that the higher the intensity of
exercise the less time or "steps" in this case is needed to achieve the same
goal.

There is a curve ball however that needs to be taken into the account - the
question is what exactly your goal is? For example, a sprinter and a long
distance runner might be averaging the same BPM rate over the course of the
week both resting and during their workouts, the end result is quite different
however.

I myself have always been a proponent of high intensity training for
everything - short and intense weight lifting workouts, sprinting etc. This
changed when at one point in my athletic "career" I switched to boxing at a
relatively young age (under 20 y.o.) and my shins/calves started getting sore
to the point where it was difficult to walk.

The way to condition those for relatively low-intensity but long (2+ hour)
workouts? Even longer and lower intensity workouts basically just walking
around or light jogging for hours.

------
dfar1
We should not dismiss products as Fitbits as being ineffective just because
maybe 10k steps is not a valid metric. A little competition and settings of
goals is good for everyone.

~~~
kilroy123
I agree.

As someone currently losing weight, my fitbit is pretty invaluable to me. I
track every single thing I eat and drink. My fitbit then automatically tracks
my walking/ running, and subtracts those calories I burn from the food
tracker.

------
jackreichert
The measuring stick in this article seems to solely concerning the resting
heart rate. Yes, this is because that is the origin for the 10k/day measure;
but, surely there are other benefits regardless of what intensity a workout
you have.

~~~
guelo
It's probably because that's the only data they have that can serve as a proxy
for fitness.

~~~
brandonb
Yep—resting heart rate is a good proxy, and readily measurable from Apple
Watch.

A definitive study would randomly assign people to an exercise routine, follow
them for 20-30 years, and then measure hard outcomes like heart attacks,
strokes, and all-cause mortality.

Since that's pretty challenging, all of the studies on exercise (and
nutrition, for that matter) make two types of approximation:

1\. analyze correlations in data rather than randomize, and/or

2\. analyze proxy metrics like resting heart rate or blood pressure rather
than hard endpoints.

That's part of what makes research on health so complex!

------
neves
Now I'm impressed with the data generated from iWatch. I thought it would be
used just in complex studies, but we can get important insights for everyday
life.

I really want to buy an activity tracker now.

------
bootload
Do you need to do 10K steps per day?

I don't think your average person is capable, let alone able to set aside the
time. Tools that confirm the minimum physical PT requirement in my view, is
good. It will individualise the minimum requirement.

I do above and below, 10km/day, 6 days per week, year in, year out. [0] This
puts me hard case territory. Does everyone need this? Probably not. I move
upwards of 1600km to 2000km per year. If you move a minimum of 5km/hr that is
2 hours per day. Time commitment required. I choose to move across broken
ground and carry weight, a minimum of 1kg and irregular max of 20Kg, averaging
around 8kg. The physical commitment to do this is high.

What do I find.

10km/day is hard. In the cold it is better. You have to take precautions in
the heat. You don't have to count calories as much. You get sore feet and
muscles. Do you need it? I doubt it. For me I can probably meet your
requirements with a 5km/day with some resistance gym work.

Interesting psychological observations: The most likely time for failure to
get out the door is the short time before you start. If you say to yourself,
"f*&$-it, just go" you are more likely start and complete. I've tried this for
a decade and the resistance to start is pretty constant but one you get out
the door, this disappears.

Do the hardest thing first ~
[http://seldomlogical.com/hard.html](http://seldomlogical.com/hard.html)

[0] currently at 5km/day with weights and gym till I crack 200km.

------
baldgeek
Been using fitbit for over 2 years now (~ 7.5Million steps logged). Have the
data being pushed to other web apps (MyFitnessPal, FitStudio, Higi,
Acheivemint, Walgreens balance rewards). Also, trained up and ran 2 half-
marathons in this time. Lost 60lbs so far, first 20lbs was from increased
walking and diligent choices via calorie logging in MyFitnessPal. Fitbit is
not the be all end all, but it definitely keeps me aware.

------
panglott
The article calls it the "manpo-kei", but the Japanese sign clearly says
"manpo mētā" (Manpo-Meter) with "meter" in katakana.

------
jim-greer
450M data points is cool, but without knowing how many people that represents,
it's hard to say how meaningful this is.

~~~
jim-greer
OP answered my tweet and said that it's thousands of people, which is
definitely significant.

------
thesz
10 000 steps roughly equal to 7-7,5 km walked.

To stop the shrinking of important parts of brain you need about 5 km/day
average in a week (you can do 35 km in Sunday, for example). BTW, 5 km/h is
close to typical walking speed, not fast and not slow either.

So yes, you do not need 10K steps a day. Slightly above 7000 steps per day
would suffice.

------
anigbrowl
The only statistics I care about are the number of exercise reps I do each day
and how many hours a week I spend dancing to loud music.Not only do I not want
to get hung up on analytics, I see absolutely no reason to share that data
with anyone else so they can work out better ways to advertise to me.

------
z3t4
Humans walk very efficient. If you want to burn fat or get your heart rate up,
a 20 second sprint is equal to two hours of walking.

If you want to increase the capacity of your cardiovascular system, to get a
lower resting pulse, the best method is to engage in an activity that gives
you around 70% of your max heart rate, for about 45 minutes or more. Examples
of such activities (for normal people) is gym training, cleaning the house,
mowing the lawn, etc. At least twice a week.

Max pulse is around 220 minus age. So if you are 35, you want to average
(220-35)*0.7=130, witch will feel easy.

------
contravariant
Who thought it was a good idea to use _bigger_ bubbles for larger groups of
people? Those values should have the _least_ spread, drawing them bigger for
no purpose is just confusing. Simple error bars would have been a lot better.

------
petercooper
Is resting heart rate a good indicator either? Mine is typically 55-58bpm but
I do no organized exercise and am sitting for much of the day (I do try to
walk quick and run up stairs to make up for it, so while I'm not "fit", I
don't feel _unfit_ per se).

I am free from cardiac related symptoms, so does this mean I am "naturally"
fit without really trying? (A bit like people who don't focus on their diet
but are slim.) Or, as I suspect, is resting heart rate not a very useful
indicator of fitness at all?

~~~
outworlder
> so does this mean I am "naturally" fit without really trying?

Doesn't mean anything. Could even be the case that you have an existing heart
condition which causes brachycardia – this is why many doctors will ask for
exams if a patient has a heart rate that low. Or could mean that your heart
muscle is stronger than what would be expected with your lifestyle. Only a
specialized doctor would know.

------
kazinator
Whaddya know. The bogus idea of chewing food 30 times (at least) also
originated (or rather was popularized) in Japan.

This sort of falls into the same bucket.

This was originated by American diet reformer Horace Fletcher in the early
1900's.

See here, e.g.:

[http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2009/10/31/Japan-govt-Chew-
fo...](http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2009/10/31/Japan-govt-Chew-
food-30-times/47381257015651/)

------
dsmithatx
Interesting data but, does lowering my resting heart rate mean I will live
longer? Will it decrease the chance of having a heart attack?

~~~
neves
based in the article and the linked research, yes!

------
auganov
Without adjusting for BMIs it doesn't tell us that much about causality. If
you could get that data that would be huge.

~~~
blakesterz
I just recently read that BMI is turning out to be a not so great measure of
things now.

[http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/vaop/naam/abs/ijo201617a.h...](http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/vaop/naam/abs/ijo201617a.html)

" Using BMI categories as the main indicator of health, an estimated 74 936
678 US adults are misclassified as cardiometabolically unhealthy or
cardiometabolically healthy. "

------
melling
Do people read the Wall Street Journal simply publish the same story 3 weeks
later?

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-counting-10-000-steps-
check...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-counting-10-000-steps-check-your-
personal-activity-intelligence-1453313834)

~~~
brandonb
I thought their metric ("physical activity index") sounded interesting, but at
least from the WSJ article, it seems to be a bit of a black box. I'd love to
see Mio publish some analysis.

------
rajneeshgopalan
I regularly work out, about 3-4 times a week. I do this to stay in shape and
have an healthy lifestyle. Although devices and charts can aid me in getting
even better, I do not use any. I simply listen carefully to my body and adapt.

------
Guildpact
The scale of a lot of this data is from 74-77 bpm resting heart rate. I feel
like there is only a small correlation and its a small distance improvement
from "couch potato" to "high intensity"

------
agumonkey
Having gone through a heart failure, I can attest that walking is godsend.
Even of moderate effort, as long as it's more than 30 minutes. Small hills are
bonuses.

\-- sent from my dead-oriented design desktop wheelchair.

------
kumarski
A calorie is not a calorie.

Leptin signal blocking counts for something...

~~~
ska
To a first approximation, a calorie is a calorie.

The mechanisms that make this not strictly true (and there are many) aren't
really worth your time and focus when thinking about diet and exercise, unless
you're trying to fool yourself into not doing something difficult.

~~~
vacri
> _To a first approximation, a calorie is a calorie._

Nope. A calorie is a thousand calories. It's a silly, ambiguous measure.
Kilojoules is unambiguous and should be used instead.

~~~
ska
That's a bit of pedantry that adds nothing. Sure, it's not a great unit but it
is the one that is used.

The post I was replying to wasn't about confusion in units. If it helps you,
read it as kCalories, but the distinction is not important here.

------
zobzu
if i bike everyday my resting hr is 42bpm

if i dont for a month its 47

walking is just one way, bike or swim is better though..

(and yes ive a rather low hr genetically regardless)

------
amar-singh
Yes, we need 10000 steps every day. Its very good to lead a healthy life..

