HealthAnalysis.com

Health Benefits of Walking

Walking has been proven to be one of the best forms of exercise that you can engage in. It can lower blood pressure and stress levels, and reduce the risk of heart attack. There are other low level activities that provide the same low aerobic benefit as walking does. Washing your car, vacuuming and cleaning your house, and riding a bicycle at less than 10 miles per hour are other activities that can fill in for those days that you don’t feel like pounding the pavement. Like walking, if done for the same amount of time, you can reap the same health benefits that walking provides.

To put things into the perspective of number of calories burned as energy,  let’s take a look at the calories burned by walking and jogging/resistance training as compared to sleeping.  The body burns about 0.4 calories per pound of weight per hour (cal/lb) when sleeping.  Walking takes 1.6 cal/lb which is 4 times more calories per pound per hour than sleeping.  The higher aerobic and resistance training activities take about 3.6 cal/lb of energy per hour.  In order to burn the same number of calories walking that you would when you go for a jog or lift weights, you would need to walk a little more than twice as long as the time spent jogging or lifting.  The exact number is 2-1/4 times longer, but this is not an exact science and 2X is easier to remember.  So if you spend ½ hour jogging, you would need to walk for 1 hour to receive about the same aerobic benefit (equal number of calories). 

The key to the effectiveness of walking is that it is a low level of activity.  Unlike jogging, it is not high impact.  Walking does not involve the heavy use of muscles as does jogging and resistance training.  Jogging and resistance training along with walking (or low level of activity) are an important part of a complete exercise program.  However, walking by itself can provide greater benefits than either one of these higher level activities can.

Walking lowers the stress response of the body.  Your stress response is what triggers your fight-flight response.  Certain activities induce stress and therefore cause your body to respond by becoming agitated.  Walking, on the other hand, relaxes the body and gently increases metabolism and efficiency.  Increase the efficiency of the body and you require less food, vitamins and minerals, and water (relative to the amount of walking) to function.  What all this means is that walking has huge health benefits without overtaxing the body.

There is one more health benefit that should be of interest to many of you.  Walking increases overall circulation helping the body grow and re-grow hair including “lost hair” on the top of your head.  Hair loss is an aging indicator.  Therefore, reverse hair loss and you have reversed part of the aging process and this is a good thing.  The process of re-growing hair is a bit more complex than just getting out and taking a short stretch around the neighborhood.  I will be going into more detail on the subject of hair growth (preventing hair loss and re-growing “lost hair”) at a later time on this Site.