Walking up to 10,000 steps every day is the key to improving health. Looking for a proven tonic for both mental and physical health, one that benefits the heart, joints, and mind? Then take a walk.
Brisk walking has been shown to improve our health, and Professor Mick Molloy, Dean of the Faculty of Sports and Exercise Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, believes it is an underappreciated panacea for wellbeing: “Walking, as quickly as possible, is one of the best things we can do to stay healthy.
It’s a tremendously beneficial health tool because it is accessible to everyone and free, making it an activity that may quickly become habit-forming for a variety of health benefits.”
A recent study suggests that it can effectively treat low back pain, which is a global epidemic affecting 619 million people globally. Statistics published in the Journal of Physiotherapy show that over two-thirds of low back pain sufferers experience a return within 12 months of initial recovery. Those who experience this will appreciate any potential solutions.
Australian experts have discovered that low back pain can be avoided by standing on your own two feet.
Macquarie University’s Spinal Pain Research Group conducted a research in the Lancet, recruiting 701 individuals aged 20 to 82 who had experienced lower back pain over the preceding six months and improved. After 12 weeks, those who were advised to start walking spent an average of 130 minutes each week, or 26 minutes on each of their five allocated days.
After 1-3 years, the activity was found to be a low-cost and straightforward treatment for back problems: walkers often lasted nearly twice as long without experiencing discomfort as those who did not follow a walking regimen.
Another new study by Adam Grimmitt, a researcher in the department of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts, suggests that chopping and changing the length of your stride when walking can aid in calorie burn. Grimmett invited a group of volunteers to walk on a treadmill for five minutes with their regular gait, then measured their average stride length and asked the same group to walk with steps that were either five percent longer or shorter than usual.
The study found that increasing step length by a percentage resulted in a 0.7% increase in the metabolic cost of walking, which is the amount of energy expended or calories burned. “Step length variability plays a modest, albeit significant role in the metabolic cost of walking,” according to Grimmitt.
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