10,000 Steps

Have you ever stopped to wonder why we are all supposed to walk 10,000 steps a day? Where did this advice come from? You would hope that it was the result of a scientific study that went on for many years where a group of highly trained scientists analyzed carefully collected data to inform the government what is best for our health…

would it shock you to know that the much-lauded 10,000 steps actually come from 1964 Japanese marketing campaign to sell pedometers?

When scientists actually do some real science and study what is optimal for our daily step count we find out that if you are over 60 you can stop at about 6000 steps. This was the news out of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A team analyzed data from 15 studies which looked at the effect of daily steps on the mortality rate, from all causes of death, for nearly 50,000 people from four continents.

However, if you are under 60 opinions differ on the optimum distance to aim for. Findings published in the journal Lancet Public Health show that the ‘youth’ should still aim for between 8,000 and 10,000 steps a day.

Here I want to share with you some other myths about health that we all seem to take for granted.

You need five fruit and veg a day 

Where did this one come from? It came from the WHO recommending we eat 400g per day of fruit and veg….but who knows what that looks like. Some countries….ermmm not naming names…The United States…don’t even use the metric system and would have to have it converted into fluid ounces or Cats per ironing board square or whatever they use for measuring things.

You can see why it’s a lot easy to say five a day…and it rhymes

However a study in 2017 called The Pure (Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiological) included more than 135,000 people aged 35 to 70 from 18 low, middle and high-income countries whose progress was followed for 7.4 years

The lead researcher on that study, Victoria Miller, noted: ‘‘Our findings suggest that three to four servings of fruit, vegetables and legumes per day show a similar benefit against reducing the risk of death to ‘five-a-day’ guidance.’

Drink eight glasses of water a day

Many people believe that the source of this myth was a 1945 recommendation by the American Food and Nutrition Board However, they didn’t acknowledge the following sentence which said, “The majority of this amount is found in meal preparations.” So…adding extra water isn’t necessary as water is already present in many of the foods we eat.

According to a 2007 article in the BMJ, Rachel C Vreeman and Aaron E Carroll stated that “there was a complete lack of evidence supporting the recommendation to drink six to eight glasses of water per day.” It also pointed out that drinking too much water can be harmful, resulting in water intoxication, hyponatraemia, and even death..

 

 

Starve a fever, feed a cold 

According to popular folklore, the term “fasting is a for a fever” originated when an English lexicographer named John Withals included it in his 1574 dictionary. The belief was tha

t eating food might assist the body to generate heat during a “cold,” and that avoiding food may help it cool down when overheated.

Well, a lot has happened in science since then. We now understand the purpose of fever and its role in fighting infections. We know that increasing body heat with a fever uses more calories so eating is actually important…but not an excuse to overeat, just eating good, healthy real food is what you need to beat both a fever and a cold.

 

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