Why walking is better than workout?

Workout is a buzzword today! If you want to get fit or maintain your body you need to work out. But is working out or exercising the optimal way to maintaining health or the age-old habit of walking is a better way to maintain health.

So here are the top reasons why high-intensity exercise is bad for you.

Please don’t misinterpret me, because I believe that a lifetime of healthy physical activity is one of the best things you can do for your body and your brain. But a lifetime of indiscriminate, chronic repetitive motion exercise like a rat on a wheel is entirely another matter, and you ought to seriously reconsider your priorities if you are stuck in that rut.

Let’s begin with some side effects of Exercise:

1. EXERCISE IS ADDICTIVE: Consistent exercise causes the body to produce endorphins, which are hormones secreted by your pituitary gland to block pain, decrease anxiety and create feelings of euphoric happiness. But endorphins are chemically similar to the drug morphine, and so for many people, compulsive exercise can be psychologically addictive. For regular exercisers, and especially for bodybuilders, triathletes, cyclists, or marathoners, reducing or stopping exercise suddenly – or even missing one single workout – can result in depression, stress, and anxiety. This “mouse on a wheel” attraction to exercise can result in overtraining, missing family obligations and social gatherings because of an intense “need” to exercise, and a worry that fitness will be lost or weight will gain with a day of missed exercise. The pursuit of exercise turns from a way to experience the beauty of nature or spend time with friends to a feeling of going to work or being stuck in a rut.
2. EXERCISE HURTS THE HEART: In one study, British researchers examined 12 runners and rowers with an average age of 57, who each had completed a total of 43 years of consistent training and 178 marathons, 65 ultramarathons, and 4 Ironman triathlons. Half of the athletes showed signs of fibrosis, or scarring of heart tissue, compared to none of the age-matched “non-exercising” controls. In addition, wear and tear of years of heavy-duty workouts or lifelong endurance exercise can weaken heart muscles – predisposing you to a condition called “ventricular arrhythmia” in which the heart beats erratically. This is probably due to damage to the right chamber of the heart, which can disrupt normal heart rate and rhythm, and this has put an end to the career of several pro endurance athletes, who engage in the type of training necessary for this problem to occur.
3. EXERCISE IS ASSOCIATED WITH BODY PERCEPTION DISORDERS: Body dysmorphic disorder is a psychological disorder in which you are excessively concerned about a perceived defect in your physical features, such as your arm or leg muscles being too small or your waistline not being thin enough. This can result in heavy, often socially isolated exercise to “repair the defect”. Typically, this type of activity can begin in adolescence or early adulthood, but can stay with you your entire life as you strive to achieve or maintain the “perfect body”.
4. EXERCISE CAN BREAK UP FAMILIES: In 2010, The Wall Street Journal published the article “A Workout Ate My Marriage”, describing how couples become increasingly conflicted as a spouse becomes obsessed with a particular exercise goal, such as extreme weight loss or an Ironman triathlon – to the detriment of time spent with family. Often, since the exercise goal can be justified as “noble”, it is difficult for a spouse or family member to negotiate with the over-exerciser to spend more time with family.
5. EXERCISE DESTROYS DIETS: Whether you are trying to eat a diet lower in inflammatory compounds to manage an autoimmune disease or cancer, trying to eat a lower calorie diet to lose weight or teach your body to eat less, or trying to switch to a low carbohydrate diet as mentioned earlier, it is very hard to accomplish these nutritional changes while you are engaged in heavy exercise patterns. This is often what causes people to stop healthy lifestyle changes: they get excited about changing their daily routine, eating better, and exercising more, but heavy exercise volume causes food cravings that make it impossible to adjust to a healthy diet, the individual becomes discouraged, and simply quits altogether.
6. EXERCISE CAUSES INFLAMMATION: Endurance exercise can increase oxygen utilisation to over 10 to 20 times the resting state, and all this extra oxygen consumption then increases the production of free radicals, which are produced as the oxygen is used to convert energy into ATP for muscle contractions. This enhanced free radical generation causes oxidative damage to muscles and other tissues, and although regular physical exercise can build the antioxidant free-radical defense system, intense and high-volume exercise can overwhelm these defenses and cause significant free radical damage.
7. EXERCISE IS STRESSFUL: The adrenal glands are two thumb-sized glands sitting atop your kidneys. They produce hormones like norepinephrine, cortisol, and DHEA, which allow your body to respond and make adjustments to physical or emotional stress. If the intensity and frequency of the stress become too great, then the adrenal glands can begin to become exhausted, and the hormones that they produce can become depleted, resulting in serious imbalances that can cause an issue like estrogen dominance in women or testosterone deficiencies in men. The end result is a tired, chronically fatigued individual who has disrupted sleep, low libido, worn-out looking eyes, a set, and stressed jawline, and a “skinny fat” body look no matter how much exercise they do. Sound familiar? I just described 90% of the marathoners and Ironman triathletes out there.
8. EXERCISE DAMAGES THE JOINTS: Since exercise is addictive, you’ll often see endurance athletes trying to push through and continue their chronic repetitive motion training no matter what, often to the continued detriment and breakdown of the body’s worn and tired joints. While you can certainly be “patched together” with braces, bands, sleeves, and cortisol shots to complete your event, you can end up taking years off your joints. If you like the idea of knee replacements, hip replacements, and not being able to play in the backyard with your grandkids without teeth-gritting pain then strap on that brace and head outside to run through the pain. Otherwise, just stop.
9. EXERCISE CAUSES PREMATURE AGING: In 4 Easy Ways To Ensure Your Skin Doesn’t Look Like A Wrinkled Elephant From Your Outdoor Exercise Habits, describe how to make sure your outdoor, sunny exercise doesn’t end up giving you a face like a prune. But excessively wrinkled skin, which is vastly accelerated by the free radical damage mentioned earlier in this article, is not the only reason that people who exercise too much look worn and aged. The heart has a finite number of beats, the back has a finite number of bends, and the cartilage has a finite number of shock absorptions, and once you’ve reached your quota, your body begins to fail. Combined with a fibrotic heart, worn adrenal glands, and chronic, systemic inflammation, you have the perfect storm for a prematurely aged and broken down body.

Walking is one of the easiest ways to get moving. Use a brisk walk to meet the weekly recommended guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate physical activity and start reaping the benefits today.

Walking doesn’t get the credit it deserves; putting one foot in front of the other is actually one of the most effective exercises for your overall health and wellbeing.

But what are the benefits of walking?

First, walking improves your heart and lung health. Multiple studies show that walking as few as five miles per week — regardless of intensity — can reduce the risk of cardiovascular events by nearly a third in both men and women. Consistent walkers see improvements in cardiac risk factors such as cholesterol, blood pressure, vascular stiffness, and obesity.

Second, walking can ease and/or reduce arthritis-related joint pain. Research indicates that walking a few miles over the course of a week can prevent arthritis from forming and protect joints around the hips and knees by strengthening the surrounding muscles.

Third, walking can help achieve and maintain a healthy weight. Walking for as little as 30 minutes per day, five days a week can reduce body fat and burn between 750 – 1,000 calories, depending on the intensity and duration of your walks.

Finally, walking is associated with a host of other benefits related to both physical and mental health such as anxiety and stress relief, improved cognitive capacities, bolstered immune system functioning, and a reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Let’s sum up the benefits:

1. Walking can be a great active recovery.
2. Daily walk helps your aching body feel better.
3. Walking helps you manage a wide range of diseases.
4. You can use walking to safely catch up with your friends.
5. Walking can bolster your mental health.
6. You can connect with nature.
7. You might ease your eye pain.
8. It’s low-key enough to squeeze into a busy day.
9. You can use walking to connect to your community…

How to Walk for Health

Try fast walking for more results. Raise your heart rate to the fat-burning zone level by doing some brisk walking. At this level, your body uses fat calories to fuel your exercise. Brisk walking means different things to different people, but it’s generally the intensity level where you begin to sweat and breathe harder. It doesn’t mean you can’t speak due to sheer exertion – that’s a step too far.

Research Says Walking This Much Per Week Extends Your Life

The world’s longest-lived people don’t pump iron, run marathons, or join gyms. Instead, they live in environments that constantly nudge them into moving without thinking about it. They grow gardens and don’t have mechanical conveniences for house and yard work. They have jobs that require them to move or get up frequently. And they walk every single day. Almost everywhere.

In Amish communities in North America, one study showed that the average woman logged 14,000 steps per day and the average man logged 18,000 steps per day, and both genders averaged about 10,000 on their day of rest. These Amish communities also had the lowest rates of obesity of any community in North America. This study eventually hit the media and began the movement to reach at least 10,000 steps per day.

Walking benefits:

• Activates lymphatic system
• Eliminates toxins
• Fights infection
• Strengthens immunity

Your environment greatly impacts your activity level, but there are ways to nudge yourself to move more if you do not live in a walkable community:

Take several small walks.

Take your dog out for a short morning jaunt around the block. Walk instead of drive to pick up workday lunches. Step outside after dinner with your family. Research shows it is better for you to break up your movement throughout the day than to work out for 30-40 minutes in the gym and sit all day.

Walk to the grocery store.

If your location safely allows you to, walk to the grocery store. Though you may not be able to purchase a week’s worth of groceries in a single trip, you can buy the freshest ingredients and return again later in the week.

Park in a spot furthest from the building.

If you work in the suburbs, in a mall, or in a business park with very few parking options, just choose to park far away from the entrance to add a few more steps to your day.

Walk 5 minutes each hour.

Get up out of your desk and take a round of the office. Fill up your water bottle. Get outside to maximize benefits, if possible.

Take one long walk of 30-40 minutes.

Recruit a friend (or your moai!) to take a post-work walk. Forty minutes will fly by before you even realize how far you’ve gone.

Recent studies show that walking as little as two hours per week can help you live longer and reduce the risk of disease.

“Our bodies were designed to move,” said Dr. David Agus, Professor of Medicine and Engineering at the University of Southern California.

I am not against exercise, I just feel walking is more sustainable way of maintaining health.

Kindly let me know what are your views.