- Title
- How many steps are enough?: dose-response curves for pedometer steps and multiple health markers in a community-based sample of older Australians
- Creator
- Ewald, Ben; Attia, John; McElduff, Patrick
- Relation
- Journal of Physical Activity and Health Vol. 11, Issue 3, p. 509-518
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/jpah.2012-0091
- Publisher
- Human Kinetics
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2014
- Description
- Background: Although an overall public health target of 10,000 steps per day has been advocated, the dose-response relationship for each health benefit of physical activity may differ. Methods: A representative community sample of 2458 Australian residents aged 55-85 wore a pedometer for a week in 2005-2007 and completed a health assessment. Age-standardized steps per day were compared with multiple markers of health using locally weighted regression to produce smoothed dose-response curves and then to select the steps per day matching 60% or 80% of the range in each health marker. Results: There is a linear relationship between activity level and markers of inflammation throughout the range of steps per day; this is also true for BMI in women and high density lipoprotein in men. For other markers, including waist:hip ratio, fasting glucose, depression, and SF-36 scores, the benefit of physical activity is mostly in the lower half of the distribution. Conclusions: Older adults have no plateau in the curve for some health outcomes, even beyond 12,000 steps per day. For other markers, however, there is a threshold effect, indicating that most of the benefit is achieved by 8000 steps per day, supporting this as a suitable public health target for older adults.
- Subject
- epidemiology; health; physical activity
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1295785
- Identifier
- uon:19122
- Identifier
- ISSN:1543-3080
- Language
- eng
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