Step Rule

I like to walk for exercise. I need exercise to control my waistline.  And my doctor has told me that weight reduction is part of a sensible plan for managing my Type 2 diabetes.  So then, what’s not to like about the 10,000 step rule?  Well, for one thing, I rebel against rules.  Speed limit? That’s just a suggestion. Golden Rule?  “Do unto others BEFORE they do unto you,” that’s what _I_ say. You tell me “No carbs!” and I’ll pig out on pasta just to spite you.  Get the picture?  Hey, I’m not saying I’m an angel here.  I’m just giving you the lay of the land as a backdrop for the following story which caught me eye.

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A recent article in the Atlantic titled “What 10,000 Steps Will Really Get You” makes the case that this health maxim contains more marketing hype than scientific fact.  Author Amanda Mull begins this way:

In America, the conventional wisdom of how to live healthily is full of axioms that long ago shed their origins. Drink eight glasses of water a day. Get eight hours of sleep. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Two thousand calories a day is normal. Even people who don’t regularly see a doctor are likely to have encountered this information, which forms the basis of a cultural shorthand. Tick these boxes, and you’re a healthy person.

In the past decade, as pedometers have proliferated in smartphone apps and wearable fitness trackers, another benchmark has entered the lexicon: Take at least 10,000 steps a day, which is about five miles of walking for most people. As with many other American fitness norms, where this particular number came from has always been a little hazy. But that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a default daily goal for some of the most popular activity trackers on the market.

Now new research is calling the usefulness of the 10,000-step standard into question — and with it, the way many Americans think about their daily activities. While basic guidelines can be helpful when they’re accurate, human health is far too complicated to be reduced to a long chain of numerical imperatives…

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I-Min Lee, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard… began looking into the step rule because she was curious about where it came from. “It turns out the original basis for this 10,000-step guideline was really a marketing strategy,” she explains. “In 1965, a Japanese company was selling pedometers, and they gave it a name that, in Japanese, means ‘the 10,000-step meter.’”

Based on conversations she’s had with Japanese researchers, Lee believes that name was chosen for the product because the character for “10,000” looks sort of like a man walking:   万          As far as she knows, the actual health merits of that number have never been validated by research.

But scientific or not, this bit of branding ingenuity transmogrified into a pearl of wisdom that traveled around the globe over the next half century, and eventually found its way onto the wrists and into the pockets of millions of Americans.

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In her research, Lee put it to the test by observing the step totals and mortality rates of more than 16,000 elderly American women. The study’s results paint a more nuanced picture of the value of physical activity.

“The basic finding was that at 4,400 steps per day, these women had significantly lower mortality rates compared to the least active women,” Lee explains. If they did more, their mortality rates continued to drop until they reached about 7,500 steps, at which point the rates leveled out.  Ultimately, increasing daily physical activity by as little as 2,000 steps — less than a mile of walking — was associated with positive health outcomes for the elderly women.

 

So then, getting some daily exercise clearly is good for you – of that there can be little doubt.  As for the 10,000 step rule?  Don’t take every marketing ploy you come across at face value – that’s my take.  Oh, and also this:  Ya just gotta love it when it’s the shape of the Japanese character for “man walking” that shapes the received wisdom about public health.

 

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My grandfather sold apples during the Great Depression.  Like the “step rule,” I’m pretty sure there’s little or no scientific basis for the statement “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”  It does, however, rhyme. And as an advertising slogan for sellers of apples in a down economy, you could do a lot worse. As for other slick marketing ploys involving this fruit?  Well, you know…

 

 

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Now, let’s all go for a walk, shall we? Bring along an apple if you like. But remember this:  Marketing ploy or no marketing ploy, the journey of 10,000 steps begins with the first one.  And that is wisdom that’ll last you a lifetime.