Fitness tracking devices often recommend we take 10,000 steps a day. But the goal of taking 10,000 steps, which many of us believe is rooted in science, in fact rests on coincidence and sticky history rather than research.

健身追踪设备通常建议我们每天走1万步。我们许多人以为迈出1万步这一目标源于科学依据，但它实际上源于巧合和挥之不去的历史，而非科学研究。

According to Dr. I-Min Lee, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an expert on step counts and health, the 10,000-steps target became popular in Japan in the 1960s. A clock maker, hoping to capitalize on interest in fitness after the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, mass-produced a pedometer with a name that, when written in Japanese characters, resembled a walking man. It also translated as “10,000-steps meter,” creating a walking aim that, through the decades, somehow became embedded in our global consciousness — and fitness trackers.

哈佛大学陈曾熙公共卫生学院流行病学教授李依敏（音）博士是计步与健康领域的专家，她表示1万步目标流行于1960年代的日本。1964年东京奥运会之后，一家钟表制造商希望借着人们对健身的兴趣，批量生产了一种计步器，其日文名称看上去像一个正在走路的人。它的一个译名是“万步计”，于是一个步行目标出现了，几十年来，它以某种方式融入了我们的全球意识，也融入了健身追踪器。

But today’s best science suggests we do not need to take 10,000 steps a day, which is about five miles, for the sake of our health or longevity.

但今天最专业的科学表明，我们不需要为了我们的健康或长寿每天走1万步（大约八公里）。

A 2019 study by Dr. Lee and her colleagues found that women in their 70s who managed as few as 4,400 steps a day reduced their risk of premature death by about 40 percent, compared to women completing 2,700 or fewer steps a day. The risks for early death continued to drop among the women walking more than 5,000 steps a day, but benefits plateaued at about 7,500 daily steps. In other words, older women who completed fewer than half of the mythic 10,000 daily steps tended to live substantially longer than those who covered even less ground.

李依敏和她的同事在2019年进行的一项研究发现，与每天走2700步或更少的女性相比，每天只走4400步的70多岁女性过早死亡的风险降低了约40%。每天走路超过5000步的女性过早死亡的风险还要更低，到每天7500步水平时，步行带来的益处达到峰值。换句话说，与那些走得很少的人相比，将传闻中的1万步完成不到一半的老年女性的寿命可以明显长很多。

Another, more expansive study last year of almost 5,000 middle-aged men and women of various ethnicities likewise found that 10,000 steps a day are not a requirement for longevity. In that study, people who walked for about 8,000 steps a day were half as likely to die prematurely from heart disease or any other cause as those who accumulated 4,000 steps a day. 

去年对近5000名不同种族的中年男性和女性进行的另一项更广泛的研究同样发现，每天走1万步并不是长寿的必要条件。在那项研究中，每天步行约8000步的人死于心脏病或任何其他原因的可能性是每天步行4000步的人的一半。

The statistical benefits of additional steps were slight, meaning it did not hurt people to amass more daily steps, up to and beyond the 10,000-steps mark. But the extra steps did not provide much additional protection against dying young, either.

8000以上步数的统计优势是微乎其微的，这意味着人们每天走更多步数——达到或超过1万步大关——不会带来问题，但是额外的步数也没有提供更多的保护来防止过早死亡。

Realistically, few of us reach that 10,000-step goal, anyway. According to recent estimates, most adults in America, Canada and other Western nations average fewer than 5,000 steps a day.

反正在现实中，我们之中很少有人能达到1万步的目标。根据最近的估计，美国、加拿大和其他西方国家的大多数成年人平均每天步行不到5000步。

And if we do reach the 10,000-step target, our feat tends to be ephemeral. A famous study in Ghent, Belgium, provided local citizens in 2005 with pedometers and encouraged them to walk for at least 10,000 steps a day for a year. Of the 660 men and women who completed the study, about 8 percent reached the 10,000 step daily goal by the end. But in a follow-up study four years later, almost no one was still striding that much. Most had slipped back to their baseline, taking about the same number of steps now as at the study’s start.

就算我们真的达到了1万步的目标，这样的努力通常也只是昙花一现。2005年，比利时根特的一项著名研究提供计步器给当地居民，并鼓励他们在一年中每天至少步行1万步。在完成研究的660名男性和女性中，大约8%的人最终做到了每天走1万步。但在四年后的一项后续研究中，几乎没有人每天还走那么多步。大多数人已经回到了他们的步数基线，每天走的步数与研究开始时大致相同。

The good news is that upping our current step counts by even a few thousand additional strides most days could be a reasonable, sufficient — and achievable — goal, Dr. Lee said. The formal physical activity guidelines issued by the United States and other governments use time, not steps, as a recommendation, and suggest we exercise for at least 150 minutes a week, or a half-hour most days, in addition to any moving around we do as part of our normal, daily lives. 

李依敏说，好消息是，大多数时候，将我们当前的每日步数增加几千步可能是一个合理、足够且可实现的目标。在美国和其他政府发布的官方体育活动指南中，建议以时间为单位而不是步数，推荐我们在完成日常生活的动作之外，每周至少锻炼150分钟，或者几乎每天半小时。

Translated into step counts, Dr. Lee said, that total would work out to a little more than 16,000 steps a week of exercise for most people, or about 2,000 to 3,000 steps most days. (Two thousand steps equal approximately a mile.) If, like many people, we currently take about 5,000 steps a day during the course of everyday activities like shopping and housework, adding the extra 2,000 to 3,000 steps would take us to a total of between 7,000 and 8,000 steps most days, which, Dr. Lee said, seems to be the step-count sweet spot.

李依敏说，换算成步数，对于大多数人来说，这个建议可以转换为每周稍高于1.6万步，或者对大多数人来说，每天走大约2000到3000步。（2000步大约等于1.6公里。）在购物和做家务等日常活动中，如果我们目前和大多数人一样每天走大约5000步，那么额外的2000到3000步将使我们每天的总步数介于7000和8000步之间，李依敏说，这大概是最合适的步数。