In 64,743 UK adults, a faster walking pace lined up with a lower death rate even below 5,000 steps a day

What the research found

Study (observational; one week of wrist tracking). A Harvard Heart Letter brief on 2 October 2026 describes a paper published online on 8 September 2026 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Researchers used tracker data from 64,743 adults in the United Kingdom, average age 62. Over about eight years there were 1,697 deaths, 502 of them from cardiovascular disease. Pace was the average steps per minute across each person’s 30 highest-activity minutes, which did not have to be consecutive. Compared with people who took fewer than 5,000 steps a day at about 45 steps per minute, people under 5,000 steps who walked faster had a substantially lower risk of cardiovascular and other deaths, similar to people who took 5,000 to 7,500 steps at a slower pace. The lowest death rates in the step groups were at 7,500 to 10,000 steps a day. The authors call a brisk 90 to 100 steps per minute for 30 minutes a day a promising target, and say people with less time or ability can mix step count and speed. The brief does not give a hazard ratio. This is not a randomized walking program, and one week of tracking does not prove that speeding up caused the lower death rate. The brief does not split results by sex. Educational notes. This is not a training prescription.

Evidence level: Clinical trial. This is among the stronger kinds of evidence, but one study rarely settles a question.

Read the original at Harvard Health Publishing / British Journal of Sports Medicine