Age is just a number – and so is your daily steps total

Your fitness tracker might be lying to you.

- Jack McNamara, senior lecturer in clinical exercise physiology at the University of East London.

That 10,000-step target flashing on your wrist? It didn't come from decades of careful research. It came from a Japanese walking club and a marketing campaign in the 1960s, writes Jack McNamara, senior lecturer in clinical exercise physiology at the University of East London.

A major new study has found that 7,000 steps a day dramatically cuts your risk of death and disease. And more steps bring even greater benefits.

People hitting 7,000 daily steps had a 47 per cent lower risk of dying prematurely than those managing just 2,000 steps, plus extra protection against heart disease, cancer and dementia.

And age changes everything, too. If you’re over 60, you hit maximum benefits at 6,000 to 8,000 daily steps. Under 60? You need 8,000 to 10,000 steps for the same protection. Your 70-year-old neighbour gets 77 per cent lower heart disease risk at just 4,500 steps daily.

The findings come from the biggest review of step counts and health ever done. Researchers gathered data from 57 separate studies tracking more than 160,000 people for up to two decades, then combined all the results to spot patterns that individual studies might miss.

This approach, called a systematic review, gives scientists much more confidence in their conclusions than any single study could.