A new study finds there may be mental health benefits with far fewer than 10,000 steps a day.
If you want to get moving more to improve your mood, you may not need to take as many daily steps as you think in order to reduce your risk of depression.
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People who took at least 7,000 steps per day had a 31 percent lower risk of depressive symptoms than individuals who walked less, the new analysis also found.
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For people who struggle with exercise, it might not take much walking to improve their mood. Every additional 1,000 steps per day was associated with a 9 percent reduction in the risk of depressive symptoms, according to the research.
“Getting more daily steps promotes mental health by enhancing brain function, improving mood, reducing stress, and encouraging positive behaviors,” says study coauthor Estela Jiménez López, PhD, of the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha in Cuenca, Spain.
“Daily steps could play a pivotal role in accumulating regular physical activity in an unstructured manner, and are a good option to break the cycle of some common perceived physical activity barriers such as low energy or fear of injury, which are particularly relevant in individuals experiencing depressive symptoms,” Dr. Jiménez López says.
The Link Between Daily Steps and Mood
The analysis examined data on people who wore fitness trackers to measure their daily steps. Researchers assessed the connection between step counts and mood based on whether participants had a formal diagnosis of depression or whether they reported depressive symptoms on questionnaires assessing their mental health.
Across all the smaller studies included in the new analysis, participants’ average number of daily steps ranged from about 2,900 to roughly 10,000. People typically tracked their steps for about a week in most of the smaller studies.
One limitation of the study is that researchers lacked long-term data on how step counts might impact mood over a period of months or years. Another drawback is that researchers lacked data to determine whether getting more than 10,000 steps a day might provide increased mental health benefits.
Getting More Steps Could Improve Your Mood in a Matter of Weeks
It’s possible that people who are already fairly active would not get added mental health benefits by going beyond 90 minutes in any one session or by exercising more than five days a week, says Adam Chekroud, PhD, an adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and cofounder and president of the mental health startup Spring Health in New York City.
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“If you are already active, additional activity might offer diminishing returns,” says Dr. Chekroud, who wasn’t involved in the new study. “However, for sedentary individuals, beginning with even light activity can have profound benefits.”
For sedentary people, starting to walk just 20 or 30 minutes a day only three times a week may help to reduce depressive symptoms, Chekroud says. “The improvement in mood can often be seen within a few weeks of starting regular physical activity,” Chekroud adds.
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