How to banish work worries... in 10,000 easy steps

TRENDY fitness trackers could be good for your home life as well as your waistline, say scientists – as long as you hit 10,000 steps a day.

That’s because reaching that magic number can help beat stress and even make it less likely that you take out work frustrations on your family, a US study has found.

The researchers discovered employees who completed an average of 10,900 steps a day are less likely to take work worries home than those who do fewer than 7,000.

That could be because those steps, run, jogged or walked, increase motivation for demanding tasks, like reining in emotions.

It is easier to bite your tongue after exer- cise, experts believe, because physical exertion boosts performance in the prefrontal cortex – the primary brain region responsible for self-regulation.

This means that exercise, along with extra sleep, can reverse some of the damage caused by work stress.

Professor Shannon Taylor, from the University of Central Florida, who teamed up with researchers from Illinois and Wisconsin for the study, said: ‘The study gives us a new perspective on the importance of getting an adequate amount of sleep and exercise. It’s not just good for you, it’s good for your spouse, too.’

For many office workers with fitness trackers such as Fitbits, 10,000 steps is the default target in order to live a less sedentary life.

Doctors say it is an achievable goal, which spurs people on to exercise as they compete against family and friends.

This latest study goes as far as to recommend handing them out to employees, after finding it improved their home life.

The researchers tracked 118 students working full-time for six months, asking them to record the number of steps walked per day, how many calories they burned, and how many hours they slept.

This was set against questionnaires recording how often they were undermined by their boss at work, while the people they lived with were quizzed on the extent to which this was taken out on them at home.

The results, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, showed that not only did completing more than 10,900 steps reduce domestic rows, but burning an additional 587 calories during the day could also prevent people taking their work stress home.

This is the equivalent of an hour of swimming or a brisk 90-minute walk.