Benefits of walking - Incredible Walking Benefits You Never Knew About

So many people consider walking to be quite unimportant, and occasionally they may even believe it to be a time waster.

Consider how much work or productive things you can do instead of, you know, walking for 45 minutes. However, after reading today's piece, you might reconsider.

Walking is undoubtedly one of the most therapeutic activities you can engage in, and the majority of the advantages I'm going to discuss are things you've probably never heard of before. I mean, we all know that walking can help you lose weight or reduce stress, but when you have high levels of cortisol, your body is in this adaptation mode. It's adapting your physiology, to your environment, to stress, so walking turns off that mechanism. Hence, you're less in this flutter fight sympathetic dominance mode and more in the parasympathetic so that's why you feel calmer which is why you feel less stressed.

The body is not stuck in this stress reaction mode, and so with lower levels of cortisol and adrenaline, you're going to feel better. Even with DNA testing, there's a certain gene that causes the person to hold on to adrenaline longer. The remedy for that is to exercise and flush it out; not necessarily always high intensity, but some low intensity, long walks.

Next, which relates to the above point, you're going to have improved creativity. What I mean by that is more creative thinking. Think about this when you're in stress mode and have high levels of cortisol. What is your level of creativity? It's usually pretty low. It's almost impossible to be creative when you're under stress and have high levels of cortisol. This definitely relates to problem solving as well, because when you solve problems, you need creativity, and when you're stressed, you're not really good at solving problems like you would if you were more calm.

You had more creativity going on a long walk, as this gave you this new space, and the ability to look at things a little bit easier. It gives you space between you and the problem, so the problem is not all up here. You have space now, and you can kind of look at it. You can kind of play with it.

You can come up with the next point, which is the mitochondria inside your cells, which is the energy factory and most diseases are associated with damaged mitochondria. They call it a problem with your metabolism, and that really relates to how well your cells are fed fuel and you get oxygen, etc. So when you go on long walks, you'll feel better overall because you'll have less anxiety, and you'll be less depressed.

Next one is this interesting exercise, especially walking, which increases microbial diversity. You'll have more diverse types of microbes that's pretty wild, which is going to help a lot of things. It's going to help your immune system, it's going to help your digestion, it's going to help your energy.

Next is that walking improves or increases the efficiency of your mitochondria, and the better your mitochondria works, the less diseases you'll have. What does endogenous mean? It simply means that it comes from within. In other words, your body has the capacity to produce antioxidants, and when you exercise, you actually produce more of your own antioxidants. This has nothing to do with the food you consume; rather, it is the result of your body producing more antioxidant networks, which will aid in your defense against free radicals. It will actually promote longevity and aid in the avoidance of several issues.

Next on the list is that walking really boosts your natural killer cells, which are immune system components that actively combat infections and cancerous cells.

Next in line is the fact that walking boosts insulin and glucose sensitivity. So if you have insulin resistance or a problem with glucose, walking improves this to the point where it can significantly decrease the resistance to insulin, which is going to help your blood sugar. So if you're diabetic or pre-diabetic, walking is awesome.

Even if you have the dawn phenomenon where you wake up in the morning, and your blood sugars are high, going for a long walk can burn off that sugar. That's what happens for the first round, I don't know about 25-30 minutes is all you need to burn off all this extra sugar you have. You start burning fat all right.

Next, and this is really interesting because, yes, it is true when you walk, you get more oxygen, but it's not about getting more oxygen in your blood. It's about what happens between your blood cells and your tissue cells. Are you absorbing more oxygen from that blood saturation? If you do an intense workout where you're breathing heavily, you think you're getting all this air, but it's kind of like having a cup that's filled with water and then you try to add more water to it. It's already filled and it just kind of flows over.

That's what happens when you exercise intensely. When you're over breathing, you're getting all this oxygen, but it's not being delivered into the tissues. In fact, you probably feel like you have to breathe harder to get more oxygen into the tissues. Here's the key: It is true that you need oxygen, but to deliver and transport that oxygen, CO2 is required.

While certain types of high intensity exercise are good for certain things, walking is good for getting oxygen deep into the cells because you're not flooding your body with oxygen and you're getting a nice balance of oxygen and CO2, which is the key to delivering that oxygen, especially if you breathe through your nose. CO2 is not just a waste product; it's essential to ensure that oxygen is delivered deeply into the tissues.

Next up: Walking promotes bone density, which is intriguing.

Next: By reducing inflammation, you're also reducing stiffness, but walking will not only help you move more generally and provide more oxygen to your tissues, but it will also improve your vision in a number of different ways.

You should make walking a very important, healthy habit in your life right away to balance this because, in addition to improving insulin sensitivity, which will benefit your eyes, kidneys, and nerves because it will lower blood sugar. Walking will also help your brain and retina, a part of your body that protrudes into your eyeball.