Article content
Walking is the most basic movement people make. If someone doesn’t have a physical disability, we take it as something completely natural.
A French study concluded that we should pay much more attention to the benefits of walking than we currently do. This is especially true with increasing age.
Health benefits of walking
The benefit of walking for people over 65 years old is truly incredible.
During a 12-year study on the effect of walking in this age group, it was found that just 15 minutes of walking reduced mortality by up to 22%!
The effect increased further with additional minutes.
As Dr. David Hupin, a physician from the Department of Clinical and Exercise Physiology at the University Hospital in Etienne in France, who participated in the study, says:
“Age is not an excuse for being untrained. It has been proven that regular physical activity has a much better effect on health than medical therapies.
However, fewer than half of older adults achieve the recommended 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity each week.”
These findings should come as no surprise. Since walking is the least costly movement for humans, its effect on various diseases has been thoroughly studied.
Why people ignore walking
Most people do not consider walking to be so-called aerobic exercise and therefore tend to ignore its benefits.
The definition of “aerobic exercise” is that such exercise must stimulate the heart and lungs to pump extra oxygen into the body for the muscles.
The fact is that this happens even during slow walking. Of course, the faster you walk, the greater the effect.
Increased cardiovascular activity means that nutrients go to where they are needed so the body can cope with the exercise. Energy is expended instead of being stored. This strengthens your organs, muscles, and bones.
Our bodies evolved for movement, not for sitting or lying down.
There is no doubt that a sedentary lifestyle that does not include an adequate amount of movement leads to disease. Low levels of physical activity cause the so-called “death by sitting syndrome”.
You have probably not heard of such a syndrome, but it is a real issue that is considered a major healthcare burden, causing many people each year to develop multiple chronic diseases and even death.
As the old proverb says: “An organ that is not used atrophies”. This applies not only to muscles but to every structure, including bones, the heart, or the lungs. And movement is life.
More studies on how walking affects the body
A 2016 study found that increasing walking in obese children to 45 minutes a day, 5 days a week, was able to increase their lung capacity in just 6 weeks.
Moreover, interval training is not only for high-intensity aerobic exercise.
Alternating fast and slow walking improves your fitness level better than walking at a constant speed.
Walks outdoors in nature are particularly beneficial, especially for mental well-being and health. An outdoor environment without the distracting influence of phones and computers improves mood, reduces stress, and lessens feelings of depression.
In addition, sunlight stimulates the production of vitamin D in the skin, whose deficiency is considered almost epidemic in today’s developed world.
If you don’t have the opportunity to go outside, walking indoors can still provide many benefits to the body.
A study conducted by Stanford University found that walking indoors on a treadmill had almost the same effect on the body as walking outdoors (of course without the extra bonus of vitamin D).
Therefore, whether outdoors or indoors, walking clearly wins over sitting when it comes to improving mental health.
A walk in the park as prevention and medicine
If something hurts, we instinctively do not want to touch it. The paradox, however, is that regular walking improves mobility and reduces the risk of injury.
Any exercise that involves overcoming weight and gravity strengthens bones and connective tissues (ligaments, tendons, cartilage, and joints), increasing blood flow and nutrient supply to them.
The Arthritis Association therefore warmly recommends walking as therapy for joint pain. As it states:
“When you don’t walk, the joints are deprived of vital nutrients, which can contribute to further deterioration of their condition and degeneration.”
The American Heart Association states that ordinary walking reduces the risk of high blood pressure, cholesterol buildup in the arteries, heart attack, and stroke.
Therefore it recommends getting healthy movement at least 30 minutes each day, a total of 150 minutes per week (including rest days) of moderate activity or 75 minutes of more intense activity.
Walking does not have to be done all at once; it can be spread out. A 15-minute walk is just as good as a 30-minute one. Start slowly and increase gradually.
That’s not all. More benefits of walking …
The health benefits of walking go far beyond those listed above.
Having trouble sleeping? Take a walk.
The Sleep Association evaluated a study which found the following:
“Moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, such as walking, reduced the time needed to fall asleep and increased sleep duration in people with insomnia on the day of exercise compared with a day without physical activity.”
That’s indeed an impressive result for a single walk, don’t you think?
Conclusion
In conclusion, let’s mention one more meta-analysis from 7 countries that lasted 11 years.
It found that regular walking reduced the incidence of cardiovascular events (heart attacks and strokes) by 31% and mortality from them by 32%.
Walking a few kilometers a day at only 3 to 4 km/h will protect you from many serious diseases.
Not everyone can work out for hours in the gym or run stairs. Almost all of us, however, can walk.
All the benefits listed in this article are truly worth taking a short walk every day. All you need for that is a pair of good shoes and 15 minutes a day.
So what do you say, can you do it?
