Live Longer with One Easy Step

“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the hell she is”

Ellen DeGeneres

Walk Your Way to Amazing Health

The New England Journal of Medicine recently reported on the twelve-year Honolulu Heart Study of 8,000 men. The study was conducted by the Kuakini Honolulu Heart Program (HHP) on the island of Oahu.

The study reports that walking just two miles a day cuts the risk of death almost in half. The walkers’ risk of death was especially lower for cancer.

Walking is a great activity and is one of the easiest ways to increase your physical activity and improve your health. Regular walking has been shown to reduce the risk of chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, asthma, stroke, and many cancers.

• Longer, moderately-paced daily walks are best for losing weight.
• Shorter, faster walks are best for conditioning your heart and lungs.

Research has shown that people who walk approximately twenty to twenty-five miles per week outlive those who don’t walk by several years. You improve your chances of protecting the heart and circulatory system by raising HDL, the good cholesterol, and keeping weight down.

Make Walking a Habit—Just Like in Europe

“A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world”

Paul Dudley White

I started walking with a pedometer to monitor my goals during my cancer treatment, and I’ve walked ever since. Europe’s walking culture is a main reason why I accepted a position in Germany as soon as possible. The healthy outdoor lifestyle of Europe is what I wanted—that was my “walking happy place.”  I’ve walked off 40 pounds since I’ve been in Germany.

I’m alive today and stage III cancer free because I walk from the time I get up in the morning until I go to sleep at night. I walk amidst eleventh-century buildings, amazing culture, and the healthy and lively people everywhere. Walking is fitness, meditation, circulatory, and it cleanses my mind.

Amazing Daily Preventative Medicine

Research reveals that walking just an extra twenty minutes each day will burn off seven pounds of body fat per year

I’ve lived in Stuttgart, Germany for almost four years—everybody walks everywhere. This is the home of Mercedes, Porsche, and BMW, but the fitness of the citizens comes from walking.  If you include walking in your daily activities, you will make this daily routine a preventive medicine jewell.

Europeans take public transportation everywhere—not a lot of sitting in front of the television and driving cars to work over here! Research shows that for every hour of brisk walking, life expectancy for some people may increase by up to two hours or more. Henry David Thoreau stated:

                  “An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day”

The easiest way to walk more is to take action and make walking a habit. Think of ways to include walking into your daily routine.

• Walk part of your journey to work.
• Take breaks at work and go for a short walk.
• Park farther away in the parking lot.
• Use the stairs instead of the elevator.
• Use public transportation as often as you can.
• Go for a walk after every meal.
• A pedometer will keep you accountable to your daily walking goal.
• Just make it a habit!

Cheers,

~Greg