Walking / Running
What are the top 10 reasons to walk?
1. The Program showed that walking 150 minutes per week and losing just 7% of your body weight (12-15 pounds) can reduce your risk of diabetes by 58%.
2. In one study, mortality rates among retired who walked less than one mile per day were nearly twice that among those who walked more than two miles per day.
3. in the Nurse's Health Study (72,488 female nurses) who walked three hours or more per week reduced their risk of a or other coronary event by 35% compared with women who did not walk.
4. In a study on walking and cognitive function, researchers found that women who walked the equivalent of an easy pace at least 1.5 hours per week had significantly better cognitive function and less cognitive decline than women who walked less than 40 minutes per week. Think about that!
5. Research shows that postmenopausal women who walk approximately one mile each day have higher whole-body bone density than women who walk shorter distances, and walking is also effective in slowing the rate of bone loss from the legs.
6. Walking for 30 minutes, three to five times per week for 12 weeks reduced symptoms of as measured with a standard depression questionnaire by 47%.
7. Women who performed the equivalent of one hour and 15 minutes to two and a half hours per week of brisk walking had an 18% decreased risk of compared with inactive women. Many studies have shown that exercise can prevent , and even if an individual person develops colon , the appear to continue both by increasing quality of life and reducing mortality.
8. Walking just three times a week for 30 minutes can significantly increase cardiorespiratory fitness.
9. A study of sedentary women showed that short bouts of brisk walking (three 10-minute walks per day) resulted in similar improvements in fitness and were at least as effective in decreasing body fatness as long bouts (one 30-minute walk per day).
10. Research shows that walking improves fitness and physical function and prevents physical disability in older persons.
The list goes on, but if I continued, there'd be no time for you to start walking! Suffice to say that walking is certainly good for you!
There's a bug about running that you catch. It could be the exhilaration of propelling your body through space, or the pounding on the ground that sends sensation up your bones all the way to the pleasure centers in your brain, or it could simply be the sheer satisfaction of having done something good for yourself. Whatever it is, running can be addictive.
The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi might describe the experience of running as "flow," the state of mind in which you are fully immersed in what you are doing. Or it could be what William Glasser calls, "positive addiction," where you perform a repetitive activity without self-criticism or judgment that has a beneficial effect on your mind and body.
What are the health benefits of running?
The benefits of vigorous exercise are well described. The American College of Sports Medicine Position Statement on Exercise is a document chock-full of studies proving that vigorous exercise yields plenty of health benefits. One of the major points of the position statement is that there is a dose response to exercise; that is, the more you do, or the harder you do it, the more benefit you accrue. But this point is not to discount moderate exercise. You get plenty of benefit from moderate exercise, it's just that vigorous exercise seems to accrue even more benefit.
The ACSM report makes it clear that "many significant health benefits are achieved by going from a sedentary state to a minimal level of physical activity; [but] programs involving higher intensities and/or greater frequency/durations provide additional benefits. For example, it was shown in one study that individuals who ran more than 50 miles per week had significantly greater increases in HDL cholesterol (the good fat) and significantly greater decreases in body fat, triglyceride levels, and the risk of coronary heart disease than individuals who ran less than 10 miles per week. In addition, the long-distance runners had a nearly 50% reduction in high blood pressure and more than a 50% reduction in the use of medications to lower blood pressure and plasma cholesterol levels."
