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Think You Need 12,000 Steps a Day for Brain Health? A New Study Suggests Otherwise
Lucia Auerbach
~4 minutes

Your daily step count may say more about your health than you think.

On Monday, at the Annual Meeting of the American Neurological Association, researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine presented a study on the topic. They found that adults who averaged fewer than 5,000 steps a day were later diagnosed with dementia, Parkinson’s disease, or stroke at almost twice the rate of those who averaged more than 12,000 steps.

The study looked at a year of Fitbit data from 22,517 adults ages 40 and older enrolled in the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program. The participants were sorted into three groups: a low-activity group that walked roughly 4,800 steps a day, a moderate-activity group that walked 8,300 steps a day, and a high-activity group that walked 12,600 steps a day.
Low step counts were tied to more neurological diagnoses

The researchers followed participants’ health records for an average of five years. They found that 343 participants received a new neurological diagnosis. The low-activity group had the highest rate: roughly 3.8 new diagnoses for every 1,000 people. In comparison, the moderate-activity group had 2.7 new diagnoses for every 1,000 people, and the high-activity group saw 2.1 new diagnoses for every 1,000 people.

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The step count alone didn’t explain the difference

While the findings suggest that less active participants were diagnosed at higher rates, much of that relationship was attributable to other conditions such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and depression.

“Low activity and conditions such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and depression are a package deal, part of a broader health picture,” Meet Popatbhai Kachhadia, MD, lead author of the study, said in a release.

The participants in the low-activity group also had a higher average body mass index, or BMI, and higher rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, and depression. When the researchers fully accounted for those conditions, the link between low activity and later diagnoses was no longer statistically significant.

Kachhadia told Inc. that the team “could not establish a statistically clear association independent of those factors,” but added that the finding “does not prove that activity is unimportant.” Instead, activity may influence brain health through weight, blood sugar, blood pressure, and mood.

A persistently low step count is a reason to look at the broader health picture, including mental health, Kachhadia said.

“Two people could record the same number of steps for very different reasons,” Kachhadia told Inc. “One might spend long hours at a desk; another might be struggling with pain, limited mobility, or low mood.”

Marc Swerdloff, MD, a co-author of the study, said that people averaging around 8,000 steps a day had meaningfully lower rates of neurological disease than the least active participants.

“Nobody needs to reach 12,000,” he said in the release.

Kachhadia added that although the study did not identify a minimum daily step count that could protect against neurological disease, he recommended following the guidance of getting at least 150 minutes of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity each week, as well as strength training twice a week.

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