Walk your way to health
Walking is health promoting
How can you walk your way to health?
Walking is one physical activity that we’re designed to profit from. There is a correlation between the amount of walking that people do and life style diseases. In people who walk less than 5000 – 7500 steps a day there’s an increased incidence of life style diseases – cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke etc.
The increased incidence of life style diseases decreases once people increase the walking threshold. Activity is important and walking is the activity that we’re designed for. Start walking 5000 steps more than you’re currently walking. If you’re doing 3000 steps, add another 5000 steps. Health benefits of the additional steps would be visible soon.
Top 10 Benefits of walking
Reduces Inflammation
It reduces inflammation. Many inflammatory chemicals eg. interleukin 6, low-density cholesterol LDL, the bad form of cholesterol are produced in the blood when you sit all day. These chemicals are all decreased by walking.
Enhances Problem solving skills
Walking helps in problem solving. If you find coming up with new ideas is a problem, start walking, you will get more ideas. If you feel that you have got an unsolvable problem, the best way to deal with that is to go for a walk. If you want to walk for problem solving, you would want to walk slowly. And if you want to talk out a problem with your partner, you would want to walk still more slowly.
Alternative uses test Give a common object like a phone or a book or something else to a group of persons. Ask them to make a list of uses for that object. Some people will list two or three uses others will list 10 or 20 uses. Now, ask people to go for a walk for 8 or 10 minutes, before they make the list. They will come up with about twice as many ideas as they would have done, had they been sitting there.
Stimulant
Walking activates the brain and body that sitting doesn’t do. On standing, brain and body change immediately. The brain gets the body ready for activity. Such signals are sent continuously from the brain to the body and there’s feedback, back from the body. Standing gets the whole brain ready for activity. This would not have occurred if you remained seated.
Release of healthy chemicals
Muscles of the legs produce chemicals known as myokines. These are only produced when muscle is contracting. Myokines diffuse throughout the body and into the brain via the blood vessels. Walking thus help keep the brain and the body in healthy working condition.
Balancing blood sugar
Taking a walk before you eat is a good way of stabilizing your blood sugar levels. Walking after a meal also helps in stabilizing the blood sugar.
It’s also a good way to get rid of food cravings.
Enhanced social health
Walking also improves the social health. While walking, you often meet people whom you wouldn’t otherwise have met. You also get to chat with others. This improves social cohesion. Social wealth and health can be built through walking.
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Improved calf muscles
Walking will not build muscle mass unless you wear weights, such as weighted jackets, when you’re walking. But walking improves the health of a particular type of muscle – the calf muscles of the legs.
If you stand for a long-time, blood pools in the feet. When you walk, calf muscles push the blood back up in the body. This is a kind of an anti-gravity effect on the circulation. This helps to prevent you from fainting every time you stand up.
Walking is also good for thigh and other leg muscles.
Walking improves mood and stress
People who walk regularly are at much less risk of succumbing to major depressive disorder compared to people who are physically inactive. This is because of the mood enhancing and stress relieving effect of walking on our mind and body.
Try a simple experiment Tell some students that they have to do a task. Ask them to walk around the university campus and to judge the beauty of the buildings. For another group you ask them to judge the beauty of the same buildings from pictures, while sitting in a room. They also have to fill a form explaining how good they were feeling on a scale of 1 to 5, before and after judging the buildings. The group that went out for the walk to look at the buildings will have improvement in their moods because of the walk.
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Reduced risk of dementia
Walking reduces the risk of dementia substantially. Other lifestyle factors that improve the risk of dementia are – not smoking, controlling the weight and eating an appropriate diet.
Once dementia has started, walking does not benefit much. But if you’ve been walking regularly throughout life it helps. It is almost like money in the bank that you’ve put away to look after your own brain health as you get older.
Women who walk regularly, have an 80% reduction in dementia compared to women who don’t exercise regularly. There is a genetic factor – the apoe4 gene which predisposes people for dementia. However, even in people with apoe4 gene, the dementia occurs 11 years later in the group that does exercise.
Improved heart health
Walking improves heart health. In order for a workout to benefit the heart, heart rate should increase. Therefore, you need to walk at a rate of 6 to 6.5 kilometers an hour. This is equivalent to walking at a pace where it’s difficult to concentrate on whatever you’re listening to through headphones, or you can’t easily carry on a conversation with the person beside you.
To increase the number of steps you walk, turn on the pedometer in the smart phone. Check regularly the number of steps you walk daily. Be very annoyed with yourself if you are not able to maintain your target of total steps for the day.
Is running better than walking?
Walking is easy. A person of any age can walk comfortably. Walking put less strain on the heart. Walking rarely produces any injury. Whereas injuries occur frequently from running. Runners have injuries like twisted ankles, sore knees, splinting and other injuries.
To summarize
• We need to weave walking into our everyday lives.
• Walk 5000 steps more to the number of steps you are already walking.
• Our bodies are built for walking and our bodies are built to profit from the walking.
• Walking is good for your heart as well as for your brain.
• Walk will benefit you in ways that you didn’t even think of, and it will do so for the whole of your life.
Note: This information is provided for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute providing medical opinion.
About the Author
Dr Anuj Birbal Jain, MD. FICPM did his post Graduation in Anaesthesia from GMC Nagpur in 2018. In 2021, he completed his full time MUHS Fellowship in Chronic Pain Medicine from Lilavati Hospital & Research Centre, Mumbai.
He has a keen interest in nutritional therapy for chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia. Dr. Anuj also deals in pain management component of Palliative care, cancer pain and other intractable pains.
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