ACTION FIGURES

HERE ARE THE NEW DIGITS YOU NEED IN ORDER TO LOOK OUT FOR NUMBER ONE.

10,000 Steps

THE NUMBER YOU KNOW: The whole 10,000-steps-a-day thing traces back to a Japanese company's pedometer, called a Manpo-kei, or “10,000-steps meter,” says Harvard Medical School professor I-Min Lee, M.D., Sc.D.

THE TRUTH BEHIND THE NUMBER: Many data trackers support the theory that 10,000 is the ideal target for steps in a day, but it’s more complicated than that. Let’s say you average only 8,000 a day. You could still have a 51 percent lower risk of death than people who average 4,000 a day, an NIH study found. In the same study, those who averaged about 12,000 daily steps were at a 65 percent lower risk of dying within the ten-year follow-up period than the group who did 4,000.

Racking up steps is great; the found that people who did more vigorous activity were less likely to die over a ten-year period.) That aerobic activity can include everything from running or biking to a tough CrossFit session. But as with the step data, there are bigger benefits to challenging yourself. A study of roughly 660,000 people discovered that those who hit between three and five times the government’s activity recommendation had the lowest mortality risk overall.