subject: Daily Walking can beat 24 illnesses [print this page] Daily Walking can beat 24 illnesses Daily Walking can beat 24 illnesses
If asked to go on a daily run or trip to the gym you may think that it's far too much effort to be sustained, but a daily walk seems much more attainable. The benefits of a daily walk can be huge so the Healthy Hideout looks at how you and your family's health could benefit.
Simply taking a 30 minute walk every day can significantly cut your risk of 24 illnesses, including cancer and heart disease. Scientific research has shown that taking a brisk daily walk can improve health while slowing down our body's deterioration due to old age. These numerous health benefits have been attributed to walking after researchers examined over 40 previous studies conducted in that last four years.
Child walking to School. Photo: Pawpaw67 on flickr.com
The researchers found that keeping fit and maintaining an active lifestyle ranks alongside not smoking as the best choices you can make for you and your family to stay healthy. In addition it seems that the benefits help both men and women in all age groups.
The study was based on a moderate level of exercise, defined as cycling or walking briskly for 150 minutes per week or 5 lots of 30 minutes exercise 5 days a week. Growing evidence also suggests that such exercise could lead to a lowered risk of dementia in later life, which is a fear for many people.
The health benefits include a lowered risk of: heart disease; dementia; type 2 diabetes; osteoporosis, cancer, obesity, high blood pressure and depression among others. There is less evidence when it comes to specific types of cancer.
Moreover, if you can increase your exercise to about an hour a day the results are even more notable with a decrease in illnesses such as cancer and improvement in overall health.
The findings show that the best health is achieved when we lead an active lifestyle, eliminate smoking, eat healthy diets and keep our weight out of the overweight category. What things do you do to keep active and lead a healthy lifestyle?
