Marching to Happiness: The power of walking

Marching to happiness – the power of walking

There’s no doubt about it, walking is good for you. It’s good for your heart, it’s good for your lungs, it’s good for the muscle and bone growth of your

Bring out Your Happiness by Walking

children and it’s good for your feeling of well being! Strong scientific evidence now supports the many benefits to health of regular walking.

Walking is free, easy, and one of the best mood-boosters around. Studies show that walking can:

• Reduce the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke
• Lower blood pressure
• Reduce high cholesterol and improve blood lipid profile
• Reduce body fat
• Enhance mental well being
• Increase bone density, hence helping to prevent osteoporosis
• Reduce the risk of cancer of the colon
• Reduce the risk of non insulin dependent diabetes
• Help to control body weight
• Help osteoarthritis
• Help flexibility and co-ordination hence reducing the risk of falls.

Whether you want to walk to improve your general health, to keep fit, to control your weight, or perhaps to recover from a period of ill-health, walking can help. It is something that can be done with children or older family members; it need cost you nothing, and can fit in with any lifestyle, income bracket, culture or domestic circumstance.

Regular participation in physical activity (like walking) is associated with reduced mortality rates for both older and younger adults. In other words, walkers live longer! In particular, walking has a high impact on cardiovascular disease. Fit and active individuals have around half the risk of cardiovascular disease compared to unfit inactive people. This level of risk is similar to smoking, high blood pressure or high cholesterol in causing heart disease.

How does walking get us too happy?

Research on anxiety, depression and exercise shows that the psychological and physical benefits of exercise can also help reduce anxiety and improve mood. The links between anxiety, depression and exercise aren’t entirely clear — but walking can definitely help you relax and make you feel better. Exercise may also help keep anxiety and depression from coming back once you’re feeling better, and it’s a known fact that we need lots of daylight to keep us at our happiest. Walking helps by:

• Releasing feel-good brain chemicals that may ease depression (neurotransmitters and endorphins)
• Reducing immune system chemicals that can worsen depression
• Increasing body temperature, which may have calming effects
• Encouraging you to gain confidence, by meeting your exercise goals and challenges, and getting you in to shape
• Taking your mind off your worries, which breaks the cycle of negative thought which feeds depression and anxiety
• Gives you more social interaction by getting you out in to the world among other people
• Helps you cope in a healthy, positive way without our usual fall backs such as drinking alcohol, dwelling on how badly you feel, or hoping anxiety or depression will go away on their own.

For general health, experts recommend accumulating a total of 30 minutes of brisk walking on most, preferably all days of the week. Get your sneakers on and get out there today to reap all the benefits of this brilliant natural happy maker!

How much do you walk in a week?

Debbie