Walk faster and live longer

A new study indicates that you can live longer if you walk faster, NNAEMEKA MERIBE writes.

How often do you take a walk? If you walk less often or not at all, you may be reducing your chances of growing old. Scientists say that by simply taking a half-hour walk five times a week, you can reduce your risk of early death by almost 20 per cent.

But how fast you walk may determine how long you will live. According to scientists, walking speed can be a useful predictor of how long you may live. The faster you walk, the longer you may live, they say.

A 12-year period study of 8000 men in Honolulu, United States, found that walking just two miles a day cut the risk of death almost in half. The study reported in the January 8, 1998 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine found that the walkers’ risk of death from cancer was especially lower.

Those who walked infrequently were about two and a half times more likely to die of cancer than were the two-mile-a-day men. These were men age 60 and above who appeared in good enough health to be able to walk. Those who did walk were less likely to die in the 12 years that followed.

Walking is also a fantastic preventative medicine as well as a good treatment for ailments. More medical research findings keep supporting this more and more each day.

For instance, it has been found that it reduces the risk of glaucoma. Dr. Michael Passo of Oregon Health Sciences University found that starting a walking program lowered the intraocular pressure of 40 sedentary individuals, which decreased their risk of glaucoma. He has found that exercise also lowers the pressure for those with glaucoma.

An optometrist at the Mercy Eye Hospital, Dr. Kelechukwu Ahaiwe, agrees with Passo’s findings. He says that studies have proved that walking for 30 minutes or more four times a week like other aerobics (exercises that use oxygen) like biking and swimming helps to lower intraocular pressure as it reduces pressure of blood in the veins around the eyes, thereby helping circulation to the optic nerves. This, he says, is good for people with primary open angle glaucoma. However, he warns that walking and other recommended aerobics should not take the place of medication but should only complement drug therapy.

Researchers at the University of Tromso, Norway, found that physical activity like walking during leisure time and at work was associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer, as reported in the May 1, 1997 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The survey of over 26,000 women confirms several earlier epidemiologic studies on the benefits of moderate exercise in preventing breast cancer.

Scientists also found that exercise like walking can reduce the side effects of high dose of chemotherapy. This was reported in a study at Freiburg University Medical Centre in Freiburg, Germany, and published in the May 1, 1997 issue of the journal, Cancer. While the study was small, its results were impressive, according to Wendy Bumgardner in her article on the health benefits of walking published on www.about.com.

Bumgardner also points out that a large study of 80,000 men and women in the Scandinavia in the 1970s uncovered the role of walking and other exercise in preventing colon cancer. Moderate recreational activity was enough to bring a 40 per cent reduction in the risk of colon cancer among women. Only those men who were over 45 at the time of entry into the study clearly benefited from physical activity when it came to colorectal cancer. The theory, she notes, is that walking, by increasing the speed up the passage of ingested foods through the colon, gives less time for carcinogens in the food to be in contact with the intestinal lining. Cancer was most reduced for the beginning (proximal) portion of the colon, less for the end (distal) portion of the colon and little or no effect on rectal cancer risk.

However, you might just live longer if you walk faster. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that walking speed can be a useful predictor of how long older adults live.

Those who walked one meter per second (about 2.25 mph) or faster consistently lived longer than others of their age and sex who walked more slowly, the study published on the January 5, 2011 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association shows.

“We’re able to show that a person’s capacity to move strongly reflects vitality and health,” says study researcher Dr. Stephanie Studenski, a professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.

However, the researchers also emphasise that the purpose of this study isn’t to get people to walk faster in hopes of living longer.

“Your body chooses the walking speed that is best for you, and that is your speed, your health indicator,” Studenski says. “And that’s what it really is: an indicator. Going out and walking faster does not necessarily mean you will suddenly live longer. You still need to address the underlying health issues.”

The researchers showed they could reliably predict the 10-year survival rate of a group of people based on how fast they walked along a four-meter track.

The walking speed for those with the average life expectancy was about 0.8 meters per second (about 1.8 mph) for most age groups of both sexes. Walking speed was a more accurate predictor of life expectancy than age or sex, the study showed.

The numbers, according to the online health news portal, www.myhealthnewsdaily.com, were especially accurate for those older than 75. This suggests that for older people, walking speed could be a sort of “vital sign,” like blood pressure and heart rate, the researchers say.

“When you think about it, a sick person would not have that certain spring in their steps. Therefore, it should not be surprising that walking speed can provide a simple glimpse into aging and health status,” notes Studenski.

The findings were based on analysis of nine previous studies that examined the walking speed, sex, age, body mass index, medical history and survival rate of almost 34,500 people.

The way we walk and how quickly we can walk depends on our energy, movement control and coordination, which, in turn, requires the proper functioning of multiple body systems, including the cardiovascular, nervous and musculoskeletal systems, Studenski tells MyHealthNewsDaily. Because of this, researchers have associated walking speed with health in the past.

“But in the past, we simply knew that walking faster was better,” says Dr. Matteo Cesari, who wrote an editorial accompanying the new findings, but was not involved in the study.

“This study provides us the numerical basis to estimate survival for each walking speed measured on an older person,” Cesari said.

“When we measure, for example, blood pressure, we need a cut-off point to understand whether it is normal or not. Similarly, we now have a cut-off point to understand whether the overall health of a person is normal for his/her age by simply testing their walking speed,” Cesari tells MyHealthNewsDaily.

Studenski says this finding will have many practical applications. It is a quick and inexpensive way for seniors to gauge their own health. Similarly, doctors can monitor and remedy their patients’ quality of life based on this. Walking speed, and in turn, mobility, will be a useful way to measure whether someone is still maintaining a healthy, active and independent lifestyle.

Similarly, findings from a research by Eleanor Simonsick, a Baltimore, US-based epidemiologist, indicate that there is a relationship between walking speed and longevity.

Simonsick and a group of scientists assembled 3,075 seniors in their seventies and asked them to traverse a 400-meter course, walking as fast as they could. They monitored their subjects’ health over the following six years, during which time 430 of the geriatrics died and many more fell ill.

Analysis of the data showed that those who were died and those who got sick were those who walked the slowest. For every minute longer it took someone to complete the 400-meter walk, he had a 29 per cent higher chance of mortality and a 52 per cent greater chance of being disabled. People who walk faster live longer—and enjoy better health in their later years.

“Walking speed absolutely reflects health status,” The New York Magazine quotes Simonsick as saying.