Walking - The fountain of youth
It would be very ironic, that after literally thousands of years of searching, the mythical ?fountain of youth? is not ?out there?, but residing within us. And walking would be the method to discover it.
Walking provides your body with a multitude of benefits. Walking first and foremost calms that stressful spirit. And we all know that far too many of our illnesses and diseases originate from our less than healthy reaction to stress.
Subscribe to our newsletter & get: "Ten Habits of Extraorinarily Healthy People"
Who among us isn?t barraged with stress? If you?re feeling overwhelmed at work and at home, you should give walking a try. It allows you to literally leave your worries and pressures behind you for 30 minutes. Before you explain that you go to the gym regularly and that you?re in great shape, consider this.
A recent study in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine reveals that walking is a better stress reliever than a strenuous workout at the gym. The study examined three groups of students: those who walked moderately every day, those who worked out vigorously daily and those were who sedentary.
The results showed that the group who walked not only had lower stress levels than the sedentary group, but also than those who worked out. Walking not only provides you with the physical exercise your body craves, but it also gives your mind some time to think. More often than not, many individuals walk outdoors, where they can appreciate the beauty of nature. Believe it or not, this is also a form of stress reduction.
Stress can age you. It?s already a well-documented fact. Consider just one statistic that has been released by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Health experts there explain that reducing stress can actually reduce a person?s chances of experiencing cardiovascular problems by a whopping 30 percent! With odds like that, why would you not want to walk?
But stress isn?t the only thing you can walk away from. You can walk away from your weight problem. We all know that exercise is one of the primary methods of burning calories and losing weight. But now new evidence also reveals that even a leisurely walk can provide your body with great rewards ? especially if you?re already quite a bit overweight. You don?t have to run at breakneck speed to do your body good.
A study concludes that those who walk one mile at a ?leisurely pace? actually burn more calories than had they walked one mile at their normal pace. This sounds pretty incredible, but the evidence is there to back the claim up.
The research took place at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The number of calories burned per pound of body weight for an obese adult, the researchers discovered, is very similar to that burned by individuals who are within a healthy weight range.
Those conducting the study expected the obese individuals would expend more energy walking at a faster pace than the leisurely one. However, those who conducted the research theorize that obese individuals ?unwittingly [alter] their posture . . . walking with straighter legs, conserving calories in the process.? Paradoxically, when these same overweight people relaxed and walked a little slower, they actually burned more calories.
There?s an added benefit to this as well. The scientists conducting this research explain that walking at the slower rate also reduces the impact placed on a person?s knees by nearly 25 percent.
