It doesn’t matter how much you sit — walking more could lower your risk of death and disease
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- University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre conducted the 72,000‑person study using objective wearable data to assess steps versus sitting time.
- Dr. Matthew Ahmadi warns walking isn’t a free pass for chronic sitting but stresses that any extra steps matter for health.
- Prof. Emmanuel Stamatakis says the findings should shape the first generation of device‑based activity guidelines.
- Study participants who reached ~9,000‑10,000 steps per day saw a 39% lower mortality risk and a 21% lower cardiovascular disease risk.
- Wearable devices provided the objective step counts that allowed researchers to isolate the benefit of walking from sitting time.
Why it matters: Public health agencies gain a clear, quantifiable target (≈10 k steps) that can cut mortality by 39 % and CVD by 21 %, potentially saving billions in healthcare costs and reducing workforce absenteeism.
