How Many Steps a Day Does It Take to Sharpen Your Attention? A 14-Year Study Hints at The Range - ScienceAlert

A daily step count is a simple way to keep track of how much we move. It may also offer clues about our attention and decision-making skills. Researchers examined activity records and cognitive test results from 3,093 US adults across 14 years to explore how everyday movement relates to thinking. They also looked at blood pressure. "Across several cognitive domains, individuals in the more active groups tended to perform better on the cognitive measures," psychiatrist Olaoluwa Okusaga of Baylor College of Medicine told ScienceAlert. The team used Fitbit records and blood pressure measurements from the US National Institutes of Health's All of Us Research Program. Participants ranged from 18 to 93 years old, with an average age of about 58. Many earlier studies relied on people reporting their own activity levels, which can be inaccurate. Wearable devices gave the researchers an objective measure of daily movement. The records covered a 14-year window, from 2009 to 2023. Not everyone had data for the whole period, so the researchers estimated each person's activity pattern from the measurements available.