Counting steps as good as time tracking for monitoring heart health

Advice about the amount of activity required to stave off heart disease is usually expressed as a time-based goal. Now, new research suggests that counting steps may be just as good for predicting the risk of cardiovascular disease and death from all causes.

Published online May 20, 2024, by JAMA Internal Medicine, the study included 14,399 women who were free of heart disease and cancer when the study began. Their average age was 72. They measured their activity using a hip-worn activity tracker for a week, and then completed annual questionnaires about their health habits, medical history, and other personal data. The amount of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity they did ranged from 20 to 149 minutes per week, while their step counts ranged from 3,691 to 7,001 per day. After a median follow-up of nine years, researchers found that both time and steps had similar associations with cardiovascular disease and death rates from any cause. Current federal guidelines recommend that adults get 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity physical activity per week. But older people could instead target about 7,000 steps per day.