Walking Just 4,000 Steps a Day May Help You Live Longer, New Study Says

Walking is undeniably a great form of exercise that benefits your brain and heart health. But with so many different guidances, it can be confusing to know exactly how many steps you should walk per day in order to reap those benefits. A new study found that walking 4,000 steps daily significantly enhances longevity—but more is always better.

The study, which was published Tuesday in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, analyzed data on nearly 227,000 people across 17 different studies. Every study included in the analysis was observational and could only show a connection between the number of steps per day and health, rather than a direct cause and effect correlation.

Researchers found that walking 4,000 steps per day was associated with a significant reduction in the risk of early death. The study also found that walking about half that distance (2,337 steps) daily still displayed a link to a decreased likelihood of developing heart disease.

With that being said, walking more steps per day had the biggest impact on risk. In fact, researchers found that adding 1,000 steps to your daily count decreased a person's death risk by 15 percent. Young adults who walked 7,000 to 13,000 steps per day saw a 49 percent decrease in risk of early death. The benefits of walking were most notable at about 20,000 steps per day.

"Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better," lead study author Maciej Banach, adjunct professor at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a press release. "We found that this applied to both men and women, irrespective of age, and irrespective of whether you live in a temperate, sub-tropical or sub-polar region of the world, or a region with a mixture of climates."