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Just Go Walk: Studies Show Normal Walking Can Add Years to Your Life and Reduce Disease Symptoms
No matter the speed or duration, walking improves your health: both in years of life, and disease markers like blood glucose.
Health
Walking can literally add years to your life, and incorporating walks after meals can improve all manner of chronic metabolic disorders.
Hardly news, the body of research on walking was augmented with another study which took place in 2003-06 but whose results were only just published recently, showing that people who took 8,000 steps per day had a 51% reduced risk of death than those who took 4,000 steps per day.
Furthermore, as uncountable scientists in the past have confirmed, the study found a cumulative, dose-dependent effect on the person, as those who walked 12,000 steps or more had a 65% reduced risk of death.
The study consisted of about 5,000 participants who wore pedometers for three years, and whose circumstances of death were monitored by the scientists.
Do the walk of life
Physical motion, not exercise in the traditional P.E. class sense, is the catalyst through which is born a strong, healthy body.
The science practically begs the reader to start moving around more, as it found the barest of minimums for participatory benefit. For example, the steps were not taken all at the same time, suggesting that on many occasion, the wearer of the pedometer was not even walking for exercise, but rather doing something like errands or chores.
Not only was there no correlation of consecutive steps and lower mortality rate, but there wasn’t even a correlation between step intensity and lower mortality rate, meaning one doesn’t even have to power-walk.
The science is quite clear: walk and live longer; exercise and live even longer.
The CDC estimates that 60%, or 165 million Americans, are living with one chronic disease, while 40% may be living with two. The cost of all this disease, according to functional medicine expert Chris Kresser, will equal national GDP by 2040.