It’s widely known daily walking can help you live longer. But research shows it takes less steps than previously thought to see benefits. A new report from the European Society of Cardiology shows the daily threshold for lowering your risk of death from any cause is less than 4,000 steps and decreased risk of dying from cardiovascular disease starts with just 2,300 steps.

A review of 17 different studies totaling more than a quarter million people shows the standard of 5,000 steps is higher than is necessary to improve your health but that doesn’t mean more is not better. Studies showed the risk of dying from any cause or from cardiovascular disease drops significantly with each 500 or 1,000 steps above the threshold of benefit. An additional 1,000 steps dropped the risk of all-cause mortality by 15 percent and just 500 additional steps cut the cardiovascular disease death risk by 7 percent.

"Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better," says Professor Maceij Banach from the Medical University of Lodz, Poland said. "We found that this applied to both men and women, irrespective of age, and irrespective of whether you live in a temperate, sub-tropical or sub-polar region of the world, or a region with a mixture of climates. In addition, our analysis indicates that as little as 4,000 steps a day are needed to significantly reduce deaths from any cause, and even fewer to reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease."

Insufficient physical activity is common throughout the world and affects more than a quarter of the people. And evidence shows that sedentary behavior leads to an increase in cardiovascular disease and shortens lifespan. The World Health Organization says more than 3 million deaths each year can be attributed to insufficient physical activity.

But walking is something most people can do since it can be done indoors and out and does not require any specialized equipment.

"Until now, it's not been clear what is the optimal number of steps, both in terms of the cut-off points over which we can start to see health benefits, and the upper limit, if any, and the role this plays in people's health,” said Dr. Ibadete Bytyçi. “However, I should emphasize that there were limited data available on step counts up to 20,000 a day, and so these results need to be confirmed in larger groups of people."

While there were benefits in both young and older participants, there was a slightly smaller benefit in people over the age of 60. There was a 49 percent reduction in the risk of death for people under 60 with a minimum 7,000 steps and a 42 percent decrease in those over 60 starting at 6,000 steps.

"In a world where we have more and more advanced drugs to target specific conditions such as cardiovascular disease, I believe we should always emphasize that lifestyle changes, including diet and exercise, which was a main hero of our analysis, might be at least as, or even more effective in reducing cardiovascular risk and prolonging lives, Banach said."

Click here to read more in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.