Daily Steps: A Real Dose-Response Hiding Behind a Marketing Number

Summary

Step count carries a **real, graded, inverse association with death and several chronic diseases** — but the benefit is concentrated in the climb out of sedentary, it **plateaus around 7,000–8,000 steps a day** rather than rising forever, and the famous "10,000 steps" target is a **1965 Japanese pedometer slogan with no original evidence base**, so the honest move is to treat steps as a useful floor to get off (most powerful for the least active), not a magic finish line to hit, while remembering the whole dose-response is **observational** (frail and ill people walk less, which inflates the a