You’re Walking Wrong (Avoid These 5 Mistakes After 50)

Benefits of Walking00:00

There are five things you're probably doing right now with walking that are canceling out most of the benefits. There are things that you could be adding to your walking that will make a huge difference in your health.

The cardiovascular system reduces risk for cardiovascular disease. There's tremendous amount of research that when you walk, you actually live longer. Then we have the metabolic system. This has to do with blood sugars, lowering your risk for type 2 diabetes. Then the brain, the hippocampus. This is the part of the brain that's directly responsible for Alzheimer's and dementia. If you do walking correctly, you actually can grow the hippocampus.

Mental health both in elevating your mood, bringing you out of a depressed or anxiety state, as well as your cognitive function. Your sleep because it clears out the accumulation of mental stress. Body composition, weight loss, better reduction of visceral fat, that's belly fat. Walking and weight training and exercise help preserve the muscle. The more muscle you have, the less health problems you're going to have, the less blood sugar problems you're going to have. Not to mention what walking does to your joints.

One of the biggest gaps between our current environment versus the environment that our ancestors developed in is motion. I talk about that in my new book called Change Your Environments with an S because one of the biggest and most important environments has to do with motion. Stress reduction, there is nothing greater than walking in reducing stress, especially mental stress. Getting you out of your head, focusing on the environment, walking is the best for that.

The immune system, especially if you walk in nature where there are trees, especially pine trees because they give off certain essential oils that help our immune system. Your eyes. Most people, including myself, sit behind a computer for the great majority of the day, and we're staring at something about a foot and a half away. So, our eyes are fixated. So, getting out in nature, looking far away, at least 20 ft or further, look at the clouds, look at trees. So important for the eyes because as we unfixate our attention from a foot and a half to way out there we actually relax the muscles of the eye specifically the ciliary muscle that is literally staying in a knot or a contracted state for many hours during the day.

Mistake 1: Focusing on Step Volume Over Quality03:00

People that focus just on getting a certain amount of steps during the day and not the quality of those steps could be losing out. Research shows just going from 7,000 steps to 10,000 steps reduced the risk of all cause mortality just by one extra percent point. It tells us it's not just about the steps. Volume of steps are important but quality is actually a little more important.

The pace at which we walked way back in the day was very different than we walk right now. We walked at a variable pace. We went fast and slow. We also walked on uneven surfaces, different terrains. We walked up hills, downhills. The surface was not all flat. It was hilly. It was all over the place.

Research comparing slow movement, just regular steps to picking up the pace and walking faster for about 3 minutes. You're adding more stress to the body. You're working a little bit harder with the first 3 minutes and then go to 3 minutes of walking slowly back and forth. If you vary the pace, you create way more benefit because you're actually adding a stress to the body and that's the stimulus that will cause the adaptation. This is very similar to interval training where we're doing interval walking. One simple thing you can do with your walk is vary the pace. 3 minutes you go faster, 3 minutes you go slower. Even if you did this for 20 minutes, it would be more benefit than an hour of a very slow pace on the treadmill. Because you're getting out of your comfort zone. You're creating more difficulty and creating more stimulus.

Our current environments are so comfortable that we actually don't thrive in that environment.

Mistake 2: Walking Before Meals Instead of After05:30

Walking before a meal is not nearly as powerful as walking after a meal because you're actually burning up the sugar that you just ate. Really think of your muscles as machines to help absorb glucose. If you're activating the muscles in a state of contraction, you're actually going to be using up that glucose. It's a great way to get rid of excess blood glucose. How long do you walk? 10 minutes. That's it. That's all you need.

Mistake 3: Believing 30 Minutes on Treadmill Counters 8 Hours of Sitting06:00

If they can just get on the treadmill for 30 minutes a day, that will counter the 8 hours behind a desk. 30 minutes on the treadmill is not going to neutralize sitting for 8 hours. Every single hour take a five-minute break and maybe go for a walk either inside or outside or do some exercise. You want to get in a state of motion to offset the hour that you just sat in one position. Being still is one of the most damaging things to our body.

Mistake 4: Walking Indoors Instead of Outdoors06:30

Some people don't have the opportunity to get outside much when they walk. They have to go on a treadmill for various reasons. Maybe it's winter and they can't go out. But if you can get outside when you walk, you are going to compound the benefits tremendously. Plus, getting exposure to the sun in the morning to start the circadian rhythm is important. Without sunglasses, just getting some light exposure to your eye, but also anytime during the day, if you can get out and get more sun, you are not only going to get vitamin D, but you also increase something called nitric oxide, which is super important in circulation and keeping your blood pressure down. 50% of the sun's rays are infrared. Infrared penetrates fairly deep into the body and it actually can give your mitochondria more energy.

The brightness of the sun, which is measured in a unit called lux. If you're out in the bright sun, you're basically getting about 100,000 units of lux. When you go inside your house exposed to the light, you're only getting like 200 to maybe, if you're lucky, 500 lux compared to a 100,000 lux. It's a huge difference. Even going outside on a cloudy day, you're getting 10 times the lux that you would in your house. It also helps myopia in children, which is a vision problem. A lot of kids are getting that because they're sitting on their screen inside all day. We're having an epidemic with a deficiency of sun lux, the brightness of the sun, because it has so many therapeutic benefits.

We compounded several environments. We added motion, walking. We're actually looking at things outside the computer screen. We're going to improve our cognitive function. We're getting exposure to sun to reset the circadian waves to help us sleep at night.

Mistake 5: Walking Alone Instead of With Others08:32

Walking alone is not nearly as powerful as when you walk with a friend or a family member. Then we can actually take one more environment, which is your social environment at another person, with you. When you both walk together, you have a conversation, you're out in the environment. Now, we add an additional benefit on top of everything else. One of the things that we had long ago was a very strong tribe, a very strong social connection with other people. Nowadays, unfortunately, we're isolated more than ever. People are lonely. If you can add a friend to walk with, that adds a social dynamic that will take things to the next level.