阅读下列短文,从每题所给的 A、B、C 和 D 四个选项中,选出最佳选项
Fitness tracking devices (健康追踪装置) often suggest we take 10,000 steps a day. But the goal of taking 10,000 steps, which many of us believe is scientific, in fact comes by accidents and history rather than research.
The 10,000-steps target became popular in Japan in the 1960s. A clock maker, mass-produced a pedometer(计步器) with a name that, when written in Japanese characters, looked like a walking man. It also translated as “10,000-steps meter,” creating a walking aim that, through the decades, somehow has been accepted widely.
But today's best science suggests we do not need to take 10,000 steps a day for our health or longevity. A 2019 study by Dr. Lee and her colleagues found that women in their 70s who take as few as 4,400 steps a day reduced their risk of early death by about 40 percent, compared to women completing 2,700 or fewer steps a day. The risks for early death continued to drop among the women walking more than 5,000 steps a day, but benefits plateaued(处于停滞状态)at about 7,500 daily steps. In other words, older women who completed fewer than half of the mythic(神话的)10,000 daily steps tended to live longer than those who covered even less ground.
Another study last year of almost 5,000 middle-aged men and women found that 10,000 steps a day are not a requirement for longevity. In that study, people who walked for about 8,000 steps a day were half as likely to die early from heart disease or any other cause as those who walked 4,000 steps a day.
According to recent estimates, most adults in Western nations average fewer than 5,000 steps a day. The good news is that increasing our current steps by even a few thousand additional ones most days could be an achievable goal, Dr. Lee said. If, like many people, we currently take about 5,000 steps a day during the course of everyday activities like shopping and housework, adding the extra 2,000 to 3,000 steps would take us to a total of between 7,000 and 8,000 steps most days, which, Dr. Lee said, seems to be the step-count sweet spot.