为了健康，我们真的需要每天走10，000步吗？

　　The advice that we take 10,000 steps a day is more a marketing accident than based on science. Taking far fewer may have notable benefits.我们每天走 10,000 步的建议与其说是基于科学，不如说是一种营销意外。 少服从可能会有显着的好处。
　　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 10,000 步。 但是，我们许多人认为迈出 10,000 步的目标植根于科学，实际上取决于巧合和粘性历史，而不是研究。
　　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.根据哈佛大学 T.H. 流行病学教授 I-Min Lee 博士的说法。 Chan公共卫生学院和计步和健康专家，10,000步目标在1960年代在日本流行。 一家钟表制造商希望在 1964 年东京奥运会后利用人们对健身的兴趣，批量生产了一个计步器，其名称用日文书写时就像一个行走的人。 它也被翻译成＂10,000 步米＂，创造了一个步行目标，几十年来，以某种方式嵌入了我们的全球意识和健身追踪器。
　　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.但是今天最好的科学表明，为了我们的健康或长寿，我们不需要每天走 10,000 步，也就是大约 5 英里。
　　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.Lee 博士和她的同事在 2019 年进行的一项研究发现，与每天完成 2,700 步或更少步数的女性相比，70 多岁的女性每天只走 4,400 步，其过早死亡的风险降低了约 40%。 每天步行超过 5,000 步的女性早逝的风险继续下降，但在每天大约 7,500 步时，其收益趋于稳定。 换句话说，完成了神话般的每日 10,000 步的一半以下的老年妇女往往比那些走得更少的人活得更长。
　　Another, more expansive study last year of almost 5,000 middle-aged men and womenof 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. 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.去年对近 5,000 名不同种族的中年男女进行的另一项更广泛的研究同样发现，每天走 10,000 步并不是长寿的必要条件。 在该研究中，每天步行约 8,000 步的人死于心脏病或任何其他原因的可能性是每天步行 4,000 步的人的一半。 额外步数在统计上的好处很小，这意味着每天增加更多步数，甚至超过 10,000 步大关并不会伤害人们。 但是额外的步骤也没有提供太多额外的保护来防止年轻的死亡。
　　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.实际上，无论如何，我们中很少有人能达到 10,000 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 5,000 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.如果我们确实达到了 10,000 步的目标，我们的壮举往往是昙花一现。 比利时根特的一项著名研究于 2005 年为当地居民提供计步器，并鼓励他们在一年内每天至少步行 10,000 步。 在完成研究的 660 名男性和女性中，大约 8% 的人在最后达到了每天 10,000 步的目标。 但在四年后的一项后续研究中，几乎没有人仍然大步向前。 大多数人已经回到了他们的基线，现在采取的步数与研究开始时的步数大致相同。
　　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. 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.Lee 博士说，好消息是，在大多数日子里，将我们目前的步数增加甚至几千步也可能是一个合理、足够且可实现的目标。 美国和其他政府发布的正式体育活动指南使用时间而不是步数作为建议，并建议我们每周至少锻炼 150 分钟，或者大多数天锻炼半小时，此外还可以四处走动。 作为我们正常日常生活的一部分。 李博士说，换算成步数，对于大多数人来说，每周锻炼的总步数会超过 16,000 步，或者大部分时间大约为 2,000 到 3,000 步。 （两千步约等于一英里。）如果像许多人一样，我们目前在购物和家务等日常活动过程中每天大约走 5,000 步，再加上额外的 2,000 到 3,000 步，我们总共需要 大部分时间 7,000 和 8,000 步，李博士说，这似乎是步数的最佳点。