Is the number of steps per day, not the speed, related to the death rate?

A new study of nearly 5,000 people finds an association between the total number of steps taken per day and the risk of dying from any reason; among 655 participants who took fewer than 4,000 steps per day, the death rate was 76.7 per 1,000 person-years (in distance, 4,000 steps is approximately 3 kilometers); But among the 1,727 people who managed between 4,000 and 7,999 steps per day, the death rate plummeted to 21.4 per 1,000 people.

It got even better for the next group, among 1,539 people who took 8,000 to just under 12,000 steps a day, the annual death rate was 6.9 per 1,000 people, the researchers report.

The study participants, who were at least 40 years old, wore accelerometers that tracked their steps for up to a week. The researchers collected the data from 2003 to 2006 as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, and then followed the participants for an average of 10 years, during which time 1,165 of them died.

Although there was an association between the number of steps per day and the risk of dying, the researchers did not find that stepping intensity (the number of steps taken per minute) was associated with the risk of mortality in the study.