For years, patients have come into my office feeling a little defeated. They’ve heard the magic number — 10,000 steps a day — and they’re walking around like it’s an Olympic sport. Some are hitting 6,000 and feeling like they’ve failed. Others tell me they’re just not “steps people,” like that makes them doomed to a lifetime of couch potato guilt and heart disease.

Let me be the first to break the news: the 10,000-step goal isn’t the golden rule of heart health. In fact, it didn’t even start in medicine. It started in marketing. A Japanese pedometer from the 1960s was branded “manpo-kei,” which translates to “10,000 step meter.” The number stuck, but not because of science.

Thankfully, science is finally catching up — and it’s got good news. Recent studies have shown that the real benefi

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