10.000 steps per day, necessary or nonsense?

10,000 steps a day, necessary evil or nonsense?

You've probably heard of the rule that you should take at least 10,000 steps every day? This statement is not directly reflected in the advice that the government gives us. They use a completely different exercise standard. We will explain exactly how it works with those 10,000 steps per day in this article.

What is the 2021 exercise standard?

The exercise standard refers to a minimum effort per week that is required to exercise healthily. The exercise standard has been the same in the Netherlands for a number of years:

• Adults: At least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise 5 days a week
• Children: Do at least one hour of moderate-intensity exercise every day.
• At least twice a week some form of strength training

These 30 minutes do not have to be in one go, but can also be divided into three times of 10 minutes or, for example, two times of 15 minutes.

Moderate intensity exercise

Moderate-intensity exercise naturally sounds a bit vague. It would be easier if it were clearly described what this entails. It comes down to the fact that you should at least achieve an elevated heart rate. However, you must still be able to talk. If you cannot do that, that is more than moderate intensity. Of course, it is not wrong to do more than moderate-intensity exercise. The physical activity guideline is a minimum, not a maximum.

Some examples of activities that fall under moderate-intensity exercise:

• Walking
• Misuse
• Heavier household tasks such as vacuuming, cleaning.
• Swimming

Origin 10,000 steps

The Japanese physician Dr. Yoshiro Hatano is the inventor of the 10,000 steps rule. Dr. Hatano researched the correlation between exercise and health. He translated the minimum exercise he considered necessary for a healthy life into the number of steps you need to take. According to this Japanese physician, we humans take an average of 6,000 steps per day.

These are the steps we take in our normal life. Think of all the movements you make in a day, for example:

• From your bed to the bathroom
• Walking through your house
• To get the mail
• Doing the shopping.

According to Dr. Hatano, half an hour of extra exercise every day would be just enough to meet his exercise standard. A half-hour walk is about 4,000 steps. 6,000 + 4,000 = 10,000. Now, the problem is that here in the Netherlands we don't take 6,000 steps a day, but rather 2,000 to 3,000. So if those 10,000 steps are the “holy grail,” then we really need to start walking a lot more. Fortunately, that is not necessary.

Why is walking healthy?

The moment you start moving or walking, you put your body to work:

• Your heart rate increases
• Your breathing increases
• Your body transports oxygen and sugar to your muscles
• Your blood circulation also increases.
• It stabilizes your blood sugar levels

And that last one is very good. When you move or do sports, your body moves 25 liters of blood per minute through your body. Normally that is only 5 liters of blood per minute. Prof. physiologist Maria Hopman: "Because the blood is pumped so hard through your blood vessels, these blood vessels are stimulated and they release all kinds of beneficial substances. That helps against arteriosclerosis and helps keep your organs such as your heart, brain and kidneys young." Our body is also made to move. In prehistoric times we were hunter-gatherers. Our genes still date from that time. However, we no longer have to move as much, we get our food in the supermarket and we mainly do our work sitting down. Maria Hopman, who is researching the connection between activity, inactivity and the development of chronic diseases: "We can now link 30 chronic diseases to our lack of activity, or lack of exercise." Do we really have to take 10,000 steps?
The short answer is “No”. But it is not bad to walk that much. If you look at this rule from the perspective of being healthy longer (read: dying later), research by I-Min Lee, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, shows that the magic limit is 7,500 steps. According to this research, people who take more steps than 7,500 would not live longer. You can also argue that you do not need to take extra steps to exercise moderately intensively. After all, one step is not the same as another. At Happy Bodies you always train for only 35 minutes, strength and cardio combined, so you have a continuously increased heart rate. In this way you take two elements from the exercise standard in one go: 35 minutes of (moderately) intensive training and strength training. If you come to the gym twice a week, you have already trained for 70 minutes (out of 150) and you have met the strength training standard 100%.