We now know that far fewer daily steps \u2014 2,300 to 7,000<\/a> \u2014 help with strengthening the heart and blood vessels and lowering the risk of early death, stroke and depression.<\/p>\n But how many do you need to protect your brain?<\/p>\n New research<\/a> from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston found out exactly how many daily steps are associated with better cognitive performance.<\/p>\n Stepping it up<\/p>\n Instead of relying on potentially inaccurate self-reported step counts, which most previous studies on walking did, this new study used objective Fitbit data.<\/p>\n Researchers took data from 2009 to 2023 \u2014 14 years \u2014 from 3,093 participants ages 18 to 93. The average age was 58.<\/p>\n They found that people\u2019s step habits generally fell into three groups: The least active group averaged 5,108 daily steps, the moderately active group around 8,875, while the most active completed around 14,161.<\/p>\n Then, researchers put them to the test. Specifically, four tests, to measure performance across attention span, delaying gratification, recognizing emotional cues and ignoring distractions.<\/p>\n Overall, the moderately and most active groups performed significantly better than the least active group in the tests measuring sustained attention, ignoring distractions and delayed gratification.<\/p>\n But the most active group didn\u2019t outperform the moderately active group on every test. The most active scored highest on sustained attention and delayed gratification, while the moderately active group scored highest on ignoring distractions.<\/p>\n The study also builds on established recommendations: any exercise is better than none<\/a>, but more is still better.<\/p>\n Every additional 1,000 steps daily at a moderate pace \u2014 about a nine-minute walk<\/a> \u2014 improved scores across sustained attention, ignoring distractions and delayed gratification.<\/p>\n Blood pressure<\/p>\n The Fitbits that participants wore also gave researchers insight into their blood pressure, which researchers believed might be lowered by physical activity, leading to better cognitive performance.<\/p>\n What they found was that higher systolic blood pressure (the top number in a reading that measures pressure from blood pumping out of the heart) was associated with slightly worse performance on delayed gratification and decision making.<\/p>\n However, it wasn\u2019t significantly linked to other cognitive abilities. Researchers believe that overall, blood pressure can explain a small portion \u2014 about 5% \u2014 of the relationship between physical activity and decision-making scores.<\/p>\n Does this research actually apply to you?<\/p>\n Researchers acknowledge they looked at a very specific population of people: Almost all had some college education and health insurance. Three in four participants were white, and more than 68% of them were women.<\/p>\n This raises questions about whether their research can apply to people outside these groups.<\/p>\n Additionally, they only measured cognitive performance once, so they don\u2019t know if participants\u2019 step count helped against cognitive decline. It\u2019s also possible that people who have better cognition are also more active.<\/p>\n \u201cOur findings support an association between long-term physical activity and later cognitive performance, but they do not prove that physical activity causes better cognition,\u201d Dr. Olaoluwa Okusaga, the study\u2019s author, told ScienceAlert<\/a>.<\/p>\n You may have noticed that researchers only observed patterns in three of the four tests. <\/p>\n Researchers suggest that the last test, recognition of emotional cues, might involve different parts of the brain than the other tests, or that their testing wasn\u2019t sensitive enough to pick up differences in people\u2019s abilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Step aside, wellness myth. The widely recommended goal of 10,000 daily steps is actually a 60-year-old marketing misconception.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[337,97,3284,15760,37383,673],"class_list":["post-890048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-study-says","tag-walking","tag-wearable-technology","tag-wellness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/people-walking-street-summer-city-145949332.jpg\")
Walking fewer than than 10,000 steps a day still provides major health benefits. Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"Senior](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/senior-man-playing-chess-caregiver-145948836.jpg\")
Research shows that more daily steps is associated with better cognitive performance. Halfpoint \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n