New discoveries in health, particularly regarding exercise physiology and nutrition, are ever evolving. As someone who receives various health newsletters from the mainstream as well as various publications related more to lifestyle, I can tell you that hardly a day goes by when there isn’t something new that is published in some type of medical publication. It can be about a new drug, new procedure, or on the effect of nutrition and lifestyle on our health.
Once in a while, a story makes it into the regular news. It makes the papers, the TV and, needless to say, all of the electronic media outlets and social media. Recently, one of these discoveries received prominent coverage while another important story didn’t get mentioned. Why one and not the other?
10,000 steps
The story that got so much attention had to do with how many steps one needs per day in order to get health benefits. Until now, we have all been familiar with the recommended number of 10,000 steps per day. There was never any great science that told us that 10,000 was the number we need to achieve.
It seems this was all dreamt up by the Japanese company, Yamasa Clock. They created a pedometer called the “manpo-kei,” which translates to “10,000 steps meter.” This number was chosen mostly for marketing purposes – it had nothing to do with science!
A new and very comprehensive study published this past July in the Lancet Public Health journal found that walking 7,000 steps a day nearly halved people’s risk of early death from all causes, compared to 2,000 steps. There was a significant reduction in risks of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease incidence, dementia, and falls in people logging more steps. These outcomes were best around 5,000 to 7,000 steps per day, with no extra benefit beyond that range.
Walking 7,000 steps a day was linked to people’s risk of dementia falling by 38%, depression dropping 22% and diabetes decreasing 14%. 7,000 steps a day (about five kilometers or three miles, depending on several factors) is less daunting than 10,000 (about seven km. or four and a half miles). So the odds are much better of getting the public to comply.
Redefining obesity
Also this past July, a study by the European Association for the Study of Obesity issued a new framework aimed at defining obesity beyond BMI. The new study was published on July 7, 2025, in Annals of Internal Medicine and suggests that people previously considered overweight are now considered to have obesity based on the EASO new framework.
These people have increased risk for mortality compared with people with normal weight with no comorbidities. The implications are that many more people are obese than we previously thought. It means a physician or other health care provider must now look at someone with a BMI below 30 who has a comorbidity besides his weight, such as hypertension, arthritis, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease, as an obese person.
This is incredibly important both in the realm of individual treatment by the physician and public health. A doctor will look at an obese patient differently in terms of all of his or her potential risks as opposed to a person who is overweight. In terms of public health, this means the obesity crisis is far worse than we thought it was.
A study on 7,000 steps instead of 10,000 is splashed all over the news, but the fact that obesity is far worse than we thought along with its ramifications doesn’t get reported.
I would like to offer the following possible answer. The new study on steps tells us that we can do less, and get the same benefit in order to achieve our health and fitness goals. The obesity study has implications which imply major behavioral change and instead of doing less of something, to conquer obesity, one usually needs to make large-scale behavioral changes or do radical treatments like surgery or injectable drugs with many side effects.
Misled by the media
It has been terribly disappointing that the news media have fallen into this trap. They even believe US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again propaganda on how to improve health. It’s great to take the artificial dyes out of the food supply and it is even important, but the effect on the growing problems of chronic and autoimmune disease will be negligible.
The data are quite clear. There are answers to turning back the ravages of disease and improving our health, but the media isn’t helping when they focus on one thing, or the wrong thing. For example, heart disease is still the leading cause of death in the United States. It kills 700,000 people a year. Yet look at media coverage. Cancer gets 37% of the coverage with heart disease getting a mere 2-3%. This misrepresents where we need to focus.
Instead of taking the dye out of popular sugary breakfast cereals, let’s show people the positive data when we switch from refined carbs laden with sugar and fat to real foods. Let’s promote the foods that help our bodies fight off disease and begin to heal.
This should be the headline; “Chronic disease can be halted by the proper lifestyle changes.” Get those 7,000 or more steps daily with some exercise, sleep well and work on your stress. That will combat disease, increase longevity, increase the quality of life and keep most of us out of the doctors office. That should be the headline!
Imagine if you pick up the morning paper and it would say, “Heart disease and diabetes virtually eliminated.” It’s not a pipe dream. It can happen and when the news media begins to cooperate and promote these ideas, just like it did to greatly reduce the rate of smoking, we will all “add hours to your days, days to your years and years to your lives.”
The writer is a wellness coach and personal trainer with more than 25 years of professional experience. He is a member of the International Council of the True Health Initiative, and of the board of Kosher Plant Based. He is the director of The Wellness Clinic. alan@alanfitness.com