Walking
People who know me know I’m committed to daily walking. My plan is to exercise every day except Sunday. (Sunday I set aside to focus on learning about and worshipping the Lord and spending time with believers.) And my favorite type of exercise is walking. I enjoy it, but there are also numerous health benefits, and these benefits vastly outweigh the energy and time expended. And you can multitask when you walk - walk the dog, memorize Scripture, listen to an audio book, talk on the phone. I would like to go through a few of those benefits with you. Perhaps they’ll motivate you to add at least 30 minutes a day of walking to your routine.
Walking helps you live longer. The January 8, 1998 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reported the findings of the Honolulu Heart Study, a 12-year study of 8000 men age 60 and above who appeared in good enough health to be able to walk. It found that walking just two miles a day cut the risk of death for these men almost in half. Also, those who walked infrequently were about 2 1/2 times more likely to die of cancer than were the two-mile-a-day men.
Walking helps control type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is the up and coming epidemic on this globe. According to Wikipedia, diabetes affects over 150 million people worldwide and this number is expected to double by 2025. A study published in June 2005 measured the amount of walking a diabetic did and the effects of walking on his/her condition. Walking or doing other aerobic exercise for 38 minutes - about 2.2 miles or 4400 steps - showed a significant effect for those with diabetes, even if they didn’t lose weight. They improved their hemoglobin A1C by 0.4%, reduced their risk of heart disease, and improved their cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Walkers who logged 10,000 steps per day - almost 90 minutes or 5 miles - saw the biggest benefit. The number of walkers with diabetes who needed insulin therapy dropped by 25%, and those on insulin therapy reduced their dosage by an average 11 units per day. They had great improvement in hemoglobin A1C levels of 1.1%, improved cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, and reduced risk of heart disease. Those who didn’t walk saw their health care costs go up by over $500 in the two-year study period. Their insulin use went up, as did cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood pressure.
Walking is good for degenerative disease control. Walking can help promote any and all of the following effects: reduced risk of heart disease, alleviation of depression, increased muscular strength, alleviation of lower back pain, reduced risk of infection, reduced risk of hypertension, increased HDL (good cholesterol), reduced risk of osteoporosis.
Walking helps control your weight. The average couch potato in the U.S. walks about 2000 to 3000 steps a day (I’ve walked as few as 1500 on my lazy days). Add just 2000 more steps a day to your regular activities (4500 to 5000 steps), and you may never gain another pound according to research by Dr. James O. Hill of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. To lose weight, add in even more steps. If you want the weight you lose to be fat, you need to stay within the aerobic range of activity. (Aerobic is low intensity exercise, anaerobic is high intensity exercise.) If you’re really heavy, it might be better to cycle or row at a gym when you first start out. But for most people, walking will keep us in that aerobic range required to burn the fat calories we all so desperately want to use up!
Walking improves mental function (or as the Journal of the American Medical Association says, physical activity is associated with significantly better cognitive function and less cognitive decline in older women.) Studies were conducted from 1995 to 2001 on over 18,000 women aged 70+. (There was a similar study conducted on men as well.) The study showed that women who walked for at least one and a half hours per week at an easy pace (one mile in 21-30 minutes) scored better in mental ability tests than women who walked for less than 38 minutes per week. The study also showed that women who were the most active were 20% less likely to develop mental impairment than the women who were the least active. In another study, researchers determined that during rapid walking, the frontal areas of the brain take in additional oxygen, a process that increases the brain’s reaction time and heightens the ability to ignore distractions and complete a variety of mental tasks carried out on a computer. Researchers said walkers improved oxygen intake by 5 percent.
Walking helps you sleep. And we all know that those 8 hours of beauty rest are important for peak vitality. University of Chicago researchers found that lack of sleep reduces the amount of human growth hormone released in the body, the hormone responsible for the body’s fat-to-muscle ratio. Restful sleep creates a balance of the hormone and leads to better health. Also, poor sleep leads to your body craving energy, which causes glucose to be released in the bloodstream. This slows your metabolism and can cause weight gain, and if you’re suffering from insulin resistance, speeds you on the path to type 2 diabetes. Also, in one study people who walked more than six blocks per day reduced their sleep problems by one third. Using a “brisk” pace cut their sleep problems in half.
But how much walking do I need to do? The current recommendation is 30 minutes a day of brisk walking. You don’t have to do all 30 minutes at once - you can start out with three ten-minute walks or two 15-minute walks. Start where you are and build up gradually. Brisk walking means walking so that you breathe a little faster, feel warmer and have a slightly faster heart beat, but you should still be able to carry on a conversation.
I use a pedometer so I know how many steps I’m getting every day. Get one that is accurate and sturdy, and wear it every day. It will count the steps you’re taking and give you an idea how many more you need to do to either maintain or lose weight. (Remember, exercise is going to increase your hunger. To lose weight, you need to maintain the same calorie intake and increase exercise. If you eat more after walking, you won’t lose that weight.) Set reasonable goals. I try to walk at least 10,000 steps a day, but as you can see from the studies quoted above, as few as 4400 steps will help your health. Here’s a link for the pedometer that my husband and I use.
Get up, get moving. You’ll do more for yourself than you might suspect.