Get In Shape By Simply Walking

You want to get healthy. You know you need to exercise more. But if you are not ready to grunt through an hour of pumping iron in the gym, don’t despair. There is growing agreement among exercise researchers that the intense physical activities offered by most health clubs are not the only – or even the preferable – path to better health. Indeed, the best thing for most of us may be to just walk.

Yes walk. At a reasonable vigorous clip for half an hour or so, may be five or six times a week. You may not feel the benefits all at once, but the evidence suggests that over the long term, a regular walking routine can do a world of preventing good. Walking, in fact, may be the perfect exercise. For starters, it’s one of the safest things you can do with your body. It’s much easier on the knees than running and doesn’t trigger untoward side effects. And for those of us who don’t have half-hour chunks of time, the news gets even better. Several recent studies suggest that walking briskly three or four times a day for 10 minutes at a time may provide many of the same benefits as walking continuously for 30 minutes.

Benefits of Walking

Heart Disease – Brisk walking is good for heart – which makes a lot of sense. The heart is a muscle, after al, and anything that makes the blood flow faster through a muscle helps keep it in shape. Regular walking also lowers blood pressure, which decreases the stress on the arteries. It can boost the amount of HDL cholesterol (the good one) in our blood. It even seems to make the blood less “sticky” , and therefore less likely to produce unwanted clots.

Weight Control – The older you get, the harder it is to maintain your weight by simply restricting what you eat. Walking briskly for at least half an hour consumes a couple of hundred calories and boosts your metabolic rate for the rest of the day, giving a better chance winning the battle of the bulge. Walk is also a great way to lose body fat.

Diabetes – Two recent studies provided strong evidence that lifestyle changes, including brisk walking 30 minutes a day, can postpone – and possibly prevent – the development of Type 2 diabetes in overweight people whose bodies have started having trouble metabolizing glucose. In both studies, the best results were achieved by subjects who lost five percent of their starting weight. But research in Finland showed that walking had a positive effect even among those who didn’t lose weight.

Osteoporosis – Walking not only strengthens the muscles, but also builds up the bones. Studies show that women who exercised regularly as children and young adults and had a healthy intake of calcium decreased their risk of developing ostoporosis later in life.

Arthritis – Millions of people suffer from osteoarthritis – the wear and tear kind of arthritis – of the knees. Walking reduces pain by strengthening the muscles around the joint. Walking in a pool or gently lifting weights can also help. You may need to exercise every other day to give joints time to recover.

Depression – A quick walk can clear up the “blues,”, but can a walking routine do anything for clinical depression? Evidence suggests it can. Antidepressants may work more quickly to dispel depression, but at least one study found that after ten months, depressed patients who were not medicated and started exercising were less likely to relapse than those who took antidepressant drugs alone.

Walking won’t cure everything that ails you, of course, and nothing happens overnight. People who have never exercised regularly should not think that in a week they will solve their problems by walking.