---
title: 'Walking This Many Steps Daily to Cut Death Risk by 35%'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=6fvf0SyLcA0'
video_id: '6fvf0SyLcA0'
date: 2026-08-10
duration_sec: 323
---

# Walking This Many Steps Daily to Cut Death Risk by 35%

> Source: [Walking This Many Steps Daily to Cut Death Risk by 35%](https://youtube.com/watch?v=6fvf0SyLcA0)

## Summary

This video discusses a recent study on the health benefits of walking for people with hypertension. The study found that walking at least 9,000 steps per day significantly reduces the risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. The host provides practical tips for incorporating more walking into daily life.

### Key Points

- **Study Design and Data Source** [00:40] — The study was published in BMC Public Health and used data from the NHANES dataset (2005-2006), tracking participants over 160 months with wrist accelerometers.
- **Survival Rates by Step Count** [01:21] — Kaplan-Meier curves show that participants who walked at least 9,000 steps per day had a ~95% survival rate, compared to ~60% for those who walked the least.
- **Protective Effect Independent of Confounders** [02:05] — The protective effect of walking 9,000 steps per day persisted even after adjusting for socioeconomic, demographic, and lifestyle variables.
- **Nonlinear Dose-Response Relationship** [03:52] — The study found a nonlinear dose-response relationship, with mortality risk decreasing substantially at daily step counts below 8,200 steps (all-cause) and 9,700 steps (cardiovascular).
- **Call to Action: Make Walking a Priority** [04:35] — The host suggests making walking a new normal and proposes financial incentives, such as insurance discounts, to encourage people to walk more.

## Transcript

walking is medicine, especially for people with high blood pressure or hypertension. I think you'll find this data really, really interesting because the researchers found that you need to walk at least this many steps per day.
because I want you to keep watching this video. But there's some really interesting graphs finding that if you walk this many steps per day, you can dramatically decrease your odds of dying from both all causes as well as
cardiovascular specific causes. So, let's get into this article that I, as I mentioned, this was published in BMC public health several weeks ago. The daily step count with all cause mortality and carvascular mortality in
hypertensive US adults a cohort study from the NHANES data set from 2005 to 2006. So numerous people were followed and tracked for a number of years and they had pedometers and accelerometers on their wrist. So the investigators
were better able to figure out how many steps they took per day and what associated outcomes they had and then stratified people into different cohorts based upon their step counts. Now as you can see from these Kaplan Meyer
survivability curves, the people that walked the least had a much higher odds of dying prematurely over time compared to people who walked more from both all causes and cardiovascular disease. And this is really pronounced and look at
the protective effect. We're going to focus here on figure 2, part A. I want you to notice this purple line here. People that walked now, here's a punch line. At least 9,000 steps per day. I mean, the really the standard deviation
was 8,200 steps, I think 9,400 steps steps per day. Let's just call it 9,000. About 95% of those people survived over the course of this long duration study period, 160 months. In contrast, the people who walked the least, only about
60% of them survived. So when you think about the impact that walking just 9,000 steps per day after adjusting for all sorts of socio, economic, and sorts of socio, economic, and demographic variables, education, race,
age, income, and all of this, walking is still really protective. So we hear so much about these social determinants of health and people in low-income communities and well, what can they do? Well, it turns out walking 9,000 steps
per day in divided doses is going to be very protective. So, I want to give you walking and some tips that I personally use in my life because at a minimum I walk 9,000 steps per day. Usually between 12 and 15,000 and many of my
friends do and this is basically how we do it. But first, I want to pause talk about these survivability curves as well. And so, these are the adjusted hazard ratios for cardiovascular mortality and all cause mortality. Turns
hypertension, and there's a ton of people out there that have high blood you look here at the U-shaped curve here, there is significantly lower risk of having a poor cardiovascular outcome and dying from heart disease if you walk
at least 9,000 steps per day. And I think that's pretty profound. And we also see the same uh sort of inflection point around 9,000 steps per day for all cause mortality uh as well. you start to see really a a dramatic reduction in in
risk of all cause mortality when individuals uh hit over about 4,000 steps per day and especially as you get down below 10,000. So I think that's really important to consider and talk about and the investigators say to our
knowledge this study is the first to elucidate the relationship between daily step count and both all cause and cardiovascular mortality in a large cohort of hypertensive patients. Our findings indicate that a higher daily
step count is significantly associated with a reduced risk of all cause and cardiovascular mortality independent of demographic factors, lifestyle, clinical assessments, biochemical markers, and coorbidities. Furthermore, we identified
nonlinear dose relationships with mortality risks for decreasing substantially at daily step counts below 8,200 steps and 9,700 steps per day for all causing cardiovascular mortality, respectively. So, let's just call it
respectively. So, let's just call it 9,000. Okay, this is achievable for most I know you can do this. So, let me know in the comments section if you have been doing this or if you plan to do this 9,000 steps per day. Let's make
people throughout the world healthy again. You know, many people, as you know, throughout CO 19, they implemented all sorts of new habits from handashing to hand sanitization, wearing gloves, wearing masks, social distancing. Why
can't we we make walking the new normal? We should be walking 9,000 steps per day. And why are doctors, you know, not prioritizing this? We hear so much about lipid reduction and blood glucose and blood, you know, uh pressure reduction.
We should be focusing on walking and mandating walking. Like imagine if you could verify with your insurance company that you walked at least 9,000 steps per data and they gave you a discount on your insurance. Like most people would
know why we're not making or implementing some financial incentives for people to do this because the science is clearly here. So, I very end. Thanks for hitting that like button. Please leave me a comment in the
know how many steps you average every day. and we'll catch you on a future day. and we'll catch you on a future video down the