zee 🐙 🦋 bsky: imzeesh

walk 10,000 steps. drink 2 liters of water. sleep 8 hours. i can't speak for the other two, but i can tell you where the first one came from. it was the name of a japanese pedometer. in the 1960s, around the tokyo olympics, a japanese company started selling a step counter called manpo-kei. man means 10,000, po means steps, kei means meter. "the 10,000 step meter." the story usually told is that a researcher, dr. yoshiro hatano, figured most people walked about 3,500 to 5,000 steps a day, and that pushing it to 10,000 would be good for them. others say 10,000 was simply a catchy number. either way, it stuck. "manpo-kei" is still that company's registered trademark in japan, and the number traveled the world until it ended up on every smartwatch. here's the funny part. in japan, the country that came up with it, the average man walks about 7,800 steps a day and the average woman about 6,500. and japanese women still have the longest life expectancy in the world. people usually point to other things too. the food, walking to the station every day, yearly health checkups at work. a large 2022 study also found the drop in death risk levels off around 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day for people over 60, and around 8,000 to 10,000 for younger adults. so if your watch scolds you at 7,000 steps today, remember it's arguing with a product name from the 1960s 🫠