The Benefits of Walking

One funny thing about the modern world is we’re constantly “rediscovering” things our ancestors took for granted. For example, “mindfulness” has been a buzzword for a long time now in the health and fitness space, with a variety of apps catering to people looking to take control of their thoughts. But meditation, the core practice of mindfulness, has been a thing for literally thousands of years, across a wide variety of cultures, religions and philosophies. Well, there’s another recent trend that falls into that category of reinventing the wheel: walking! Researchers, fitness influencers and everyday men and women are all of a sudden extolling the benefits of walking, as if poets, philosophers, naturalists and religious mystics haven’t known for centuries that walking is a great way to enhance your overall health and well-being, break out of a mental rut, generate new ideas, and keep in touch with the natural world.  RELATED: How to Lose Weight by Walking Read on to discover the benefits of walking more often and the science that backs these claims up. 5 Key Benefits to Walking More So why should you hit the pavement more? Here are five good reasons to get outside (yes, even when the weather sucks) and increase your step count. Improved Body Composition Walking is exercise, but it doesn’t feel like exercise — and that’s basically its superpower. Sprinting, jogging, cycling and swimming all burn more calories per minute than merely walking, but they also stress your muscles, joints and nervous system, requiring dedicated recovery time. Walking, on the other hand, doesn’t impose any real stress on any of your body’s main systems, and it can be easily incorporated into your everyday life in a way that sprinting and swimming, for example, cannot. Do you normally drive to work? Try walking. Do you normally take the elevator or escalator? Walk up the stairs instead. That errand you had to run, that you were going to use your car for? Yep, now you’re going to walk. Any five- or ten-minute walk might not seem like a big contribution to your weight loss, but the accumulation of all these smaller walks can add some serious numbers to your daily energy expenditure, helping you speed up fat loss while retaining muscle mass. According to the Mayo Clinic, for example, a 30-minute walk each day burns about 150 additional calories — which is a phenomenal start for a very small lifestyle adjustment. Greater Creativity Creativity isn’t just important for artists. In our daily lives, we often get stuck in mental ruts, patterned ways of thinking that may, over the long term, cause us to miss opportunities right in front of us, fail to appreciate someone or something in our lives, or just feel stumped by the ordinary, everyday problems life and work can throw at us. Thankfully, it turns out that walking more, even for very short periods of time, might unlock your inner creative potential. A famous study conducted at Stanford, cleverly titled “Give Your Ideas Some Legs,” found that study participants who walked more (including indoor walking!) than their sitting peers generated a whopping 60% more responses to creative prompts. Walk duration didn’t even play a major role: five-minute walks and 15-minute walks seemed about equally good at getting the creative juices flowing. So if you’re stuck in a rut or trying to solve a problem that’s been plaguing you for some time, consider hitting the pavement; you never know what your brain might come up with after a brief walk. Less Stress Stress is one of the biggest pitfalls of modern life. We’re chronically sleep deprived, on a deadline, and crunched for time, all of which generates exorbitant amounts of stress. And “stress” has a wide variety of biological markers, from high blood pressure to headaches, chest pain to impotence. Thankfully, you can do things to alleviate the stress and spare yourself the symptoms, and walking may be one of the easiest (unless you like ice baths). In one recent study, which sought to compare the stress relief benefits of both walking and meditation, a brisk 10-minute walk was enough to show marked improvements across a variety of self-reported mood indicators, from stress and anxiety to focus and sadness. In fact, in the short term, the walking group benefited as much as the meditating group. Reduced Back Pain Back pain is both debilitating and depressingly common, with roughly 28% of American adults reporting chronic back pain, but the culprit, counterintuitively, is sitting. Prolonged periods of sitting (at, say, an office desk or in a classroom) is strongly associated with back pain, largely because the stabilizer muscles around the spine are allowed to atrophy while the hamstrings are kept in an unlengthened position, leading to hamstring tightness that creates tension in the lower back. The cure, then, is actually movement, and, more specifically, walking. In a multivariate analysis of various interventions for lower back pain, conducted in 2020, walking was the standout treatment option, even more effective than regular stretching and yoga for reversing chronic back pain. Why is that, exactly? Because your anatomy was designed to allow you to move upright (we’re the bipedal ape, remember?), and upright walking engages and strengthens all of the core muscles that help keep our spine protected. Improved Cognition Famous writers, artists and scientists, from William Wordsworth to Albert Einstein, have all extolled the benefits of long walks, particularly in the outdoors, but we finally have the science to prove their conjectures. A study published in the Journal for Alzheimer’s Disease comparing both healthy adults and those suffering from mild cognitive dysfunction found that regular walking improved scores in a battery of cognitive assessments, including memory, judgment and reasoning. A later study published in Scientific Reports took things a step further: what if, instead of walking on treadmills, participants walked outside, just as Wordsworth and Einstein were famous for doing on a regular basis? Once again, the results were astonishing: the outdoor walkers scored even higher than the indoor walkers on a similar array of mental challenges and tests. The scientists theorized that the variety of exposure, from the different sights, smells and sounds, offered additional cognitive stimulations that ultimately helped to boost brain function. Obviously, you don’t need to suffer from lower back pain or early onset Alzheimer’s to benefit from a brisk walk. The next time you have the chance, ditch the car and take a stroll instead; your body will thank you for it. You Might Also Dig: How to Relieve Lower Back PainEverything You Need to Know About Heart Rate ZonesHow Often Should You Do Cardio?