On average, Americans take just under 5,000 steps a day . It’s a concerning number, given that public-health researchers consider a daily step count of less than 5,000 to be sedentary , and sedentary living erodes health, leading to earlier death.

Researchers are therefore motivated to find out how best to get people moving. Do all steps count? Should they be quick steps, or are slow ones OK? Does it matter how many days of the week you take longer walks? They’ve turned to enormous databases to link people’s health with details of their steps. In a study published October 28 in the Annals of Internal Medicine , scientists found that among more than 30,000 people in the U.K. who took fewer than 8,000 steps a day, getting steps in longer walks rather than accruing them bit by bit wa

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