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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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Can Walking Prevent Heart Disease? Walking was used for transportation in the past when cars or buses were not available. People walk to school, to work, or to visit friends. Now modernization has made people walk as little as possible. With moving walkways in large buildings like airports, one can move from one part of the building to another. People make use of elevators and escalators to move from one floor to another instead of using stairways. 2,400 years ago, a Greek physician, Hippocrates who is often referred to as the Father of Western Medicine, said that: “Walking is a man’s best medicine!” Is this statement still valid now? Many health professionals believe that walking can improve cardiac risk factors like cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, vascular stiffness and inflammation, and mental stress. It also helps protect against dementia, peripheral artery disease, depression, colon cancer, and even erectile dysfunction. But most studies that show regular exercise is good for health usually focused on various forms of exercise to investigate the influence of total amount of physical activity on health. It does not necessarily indicate that walking is beneficial. Researchers from University College London reported in 2008 that walking cut the risk of cardiovascular events by 31 percent, and it reduced the risk of dying during the study period by 32 percent, after reviewing 18 studies that covered 459,833 participants who were free of cardiovascular disease. Protection was evident even at distances of just 5˝ miles per week and at a pace as slow as about 2 miles per hour. Those who walked longer distances, walked at a faster pace, or both enjoyed the greatest protection. The participants were tracked for an average of 11.3 years, during which cardiovascular events like angina, heart attack, heart failure, coronary artery bypass surgery, angioplasty, and stroke as well as deaths were recorded.
For people already have heart disease, walking can help, too. A meta-analysis of 48 trials in 8,946 patients found that moderate exercise such as walking or riding a stationary bicycle for 30 minutes 3 times a week, could lower the risk of death from heart disease by 26 percent and overall death rate by 20 percent. In June 2015, an article published by researchers from Oregon State University in the ‘American Journal of Health Promotion’ stated that older adults who regularly performed light-intensity exercise were 18 percent healthier than those who were less active. People who were regularly active had lower body mass index (BMI), smaller waist circumference, better insulin rates, and were less likely to have chronic diseases. The study involved more than 6,000 American adults. Small amounts of exercise, such as taking the stairs instead of the escalator, shopping at a mall versus online, or walking into a restaurant instead of using the drive-through window, were focused in the study. If one’s daily 1- to 2-minutes increments of exercise add up to a total of 30 minutes per day, the benefits appear to be the same as 30 minutes of continuous movement. These findings highlighted the importance of engaging in lower-intensity activities whenever opportunity arises, in addition to promoting moderate-intensity physical activity to older adults. Older folks were often unable or uninspired to pursue moderate or vigorous exercise, and light exercise is more appealing as it can easily be incorporated into the daily routine. Perhaps it is time that we should make walking as part of our daily life as walking does not need any special equipment. There are too many ways we can increase the frequency of walking. For instance, we can walk to train or subway instead of driving to work or to store, we can get off the bus or subway a few stops before the destination, we can park our car farther away and walk to destination, or we can go for a walk during lunchtime instead of spending all the time in the cafeteria.
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