WHY WALK IN WINTER?

I’ve just spent a month working in the Swiss Alps (yes, I know, lucky me!). As my accommodation was at the bottom of a valley surrounded by mountains, and as I had no car and there was no bus service on the valley floor, I spent a lot of time climbing a lot of mountains. Just getting to the train and bus station involved a 20 minute, extremely steep climb up a muddy forest track strewn with pine cones, rocks and slippery leaves.

Unsurprisingly, I found myself drawn to the latest studies of movement. I wanted to know what all the uphill huff and puff was really doing, not to mention the downhill drag on knees and limbs, and the slipping and sliding through mud and (later on) snow.  I wanted to know if there had been any important developments since the writing of my three walking books.

And, of course, there had. The evidence for walking is stronger than ever. Indeed, other than some resistance/strength training for the upper body, and perhaps some stretching/yoga, little additional exercise is required.  Having said that, how we walk matters.

So, let’s look at some of the recent studies.

First up, let’s consider the headlines about 7000 steps being the new 10,000 steps.  These headlines were rather misleading.  A good read of the report makes it clear that this was only the case for people who  managed 2000 steps a day.  In other words, for sedentary people, going from 2000 steps to 7000 had huge benefits.  They would have seen more benefits if they’d pushed on to 10,000 steps, but 7000 was good enough.  If you read my recent post on Prof Janet Lord, you’ll know that 10,000 is her magic number for wiping out inflammaging.  Indeed, multiple studies show that more is always better  – so don’t cut back your steps in the belief that 7000 is just as good as 10,000.  But on busy days, if you can manage 7000 steps,  that’s just fine and there’s no need to go rushing round the block to get to 10,000.  And, yes, if you’re only managing 2000 steps a day, increasing that to 7000 steps will have enormous benefits – cutting your risk of death, say the researchers, by a whopping 47% .

But for those that find 7000, let alone 10,000 an intimidating target, another study published last week found that for anyone with a totally sedentary lifestyle, as little as 4000 steps twice a week can have dramatic effects: In this study scientists found that older women who achieved 4,000 steps on just one or two days a week lowered their cardiovascular disease risk by 27% and mortality risk by 26% compared to those who managed very few steps. Women who totalled 4,000 steps for three or more days a week decreased their mortality risk by 40%.

“Even relatively modest goals, such as achieving 4,000 steps a day on just one or two days a week, can be associated with meaningful health benefits,” said the lead researcher. So there you have it: more is always better, whatever your current threshold!

Next up, walk fast (or uphill)!  Or as fast as you can for 15 minutes. A study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine in July found that fast walking (which included the huff and puff of slow uphill walking or stair climbing), even for a mere 15 minutes a day, dramatically reduced the risk of death (by 20% to be precise) from anything, but especially from heart disease.  Slow walking-  even if for three hours a day! – didn’t reap the same rewards.

But what about the durations of our walks? Is it better to do lots of little walks or a single longer walk? Well, a report published last week found that longer walks are much better. This study investigated 33,560 people who typically walked for up to 8000 steps a day. It found that walking for longer stretches was associated with a lower risk of death, and particularly a lower risk of death from heart disease, when compared to multiple walks of shorter durations.

In this study, walkers (with a typical age of 62) were divided according to the length of their average daily walks: less than five minutes, five to ten minutes, ten to 15 minutes, and 15 minutes or more.

About 43% of participants fell into the less than five-minute group, while (astonishingly) only 8% were in the fifteen minutes or longer group.  After eight years of follow-up, the researchers concluded that “among adults taking fewer than 8,000 daily steps, those who accumulated most of their steps in longer, sustained bouts—particularly 10 minutes or more—had substantially lower risks of cardiovascular disease and premature death than those whose steps were mainly taken in very short bouts.”

So try and make your daily walk as long as you can, and include some fast or uphill walking if you can – aiming for 15 minutes of both.

What about where you walk?  In Switzerland I was on a mud track, and frequently wobbling over scree, stones and (later in the month) snow.  Luckily I had good sturdy walking boots and my trusty poles (I’ll cover the latest research on poles in an upcoming post). But the data on uneven surfaces is equally encouraging.

Our bodies learn to balance, stabilise and focus when we’re on uneven terrain (or when we’re walking backwards incidentally – I’ll write about this in a future post). Uphill and downhill also require more of these skills – which include brain skills, as the entirety of our body works to keep us upright and safe.

Studies – like this one – have found that uneven terrain (gravel, grass, mud, undulations, slopes etc) nudge our bodies into using extra muscles, such as the deep muscles of our core (the transverse abdominis) which protect our organs and keep us upright and balanced – vital as we age, preventing us from toppling over as well as enabling us to rotate, twist and balance.  If you slip a little, as I frequently did, you’ll feel a tightening of the core – this is our transverse abdominis keeping us safely and stably upright.  These muscles are kept in good shape by the constant tiny slips we make on uneven or unpredictable surfaces.  Each miniscule slip actually helps improve our stability and our reaction times.

Uneven terrain also improves our brain.  Another study used EEG to measure the brain activity of 32 participants as they walked on uneven terrain at different speeds. The researchers noticed that multiple brain regions were activated when walking across uneven terrain.  They then investigated different walking speeds across these various terrains.  They found that speed only slightly modified the extraordinary brain effects of walking on uneven ground, concluding that ‘there are distinct cortical processes contributing to the control of walking over uneven terrain versus walking on … smooth, flat terrain.’

Which is to say, walking on a variety of surfaces is excellent both for your body and your brain.  So don’t restrict yourself to concrete pavements.

To have the best results, you need to be in the right footwear – shoes or boots where your toes can fully spread (the toes play a critical role in stabilising us) and where the soles aren’t so chunky that you can’t feel the terrain.  Your feet need to be capable of ‘reading’ the landscape – so that they too can send vital messages to your brain.

Having said that, if you’re on really rocky trails, you’ll need decent soles and good ankle support too.

In Switzerland I often took walks of 3-4 hours (there wasn’t much else to do, other than work!). And before leaving for Switzerland The Husband and I walked the Six Dales Trail in Yorkshire, which involved walking all day (yes, eight hours of tramping!) –  this is known as long distance walking, or endurance walking. So I was also intrigued to read a report published in July on the effects of endurance training, which found that ‘endurance-trained older adults have natural killer cells with greater functional adaptability, reduced senescence, and enhanced metabolism under inflammatory and pharmacological stress.’ Note: these were all men, in their 60s.  The results need replicating in a study of women.

But what does this mean?  Well, it means that those of you who enjoy – or once enjoyed – regularly doing long-ish cycle rides, walks, jogs, swims, dances (anything requiring the body to keep going for an hour at a time) may well have developed exceptionally robust immunity. As we regularly remind our readers, growing older is associated with reduced, or failing, immunity.  So a strong immune system is vital.

But don’t fret about not having done very long duration exercise: the researchers explained to me that their idea of ‘endurance’ was regular exercise (‘aerobic, rhythmic, large-muscle activities’ perhaps done for an hour at a time) but done routinely over a number of years. They suggested this could be someone doing 12 hours a week over a period of over 20 years – of uphill walking or dancing, for instance.  The important thing was that it was regular, heart-pumping, possibly competitive, and done for decades.

If you’re interested in learning more about walking for wellbeing, I have a seminar coming up (Tuesday 18^th November, 6-7pm) in conjunction with The Ramblers (a fantastic organisation for anyone wanting to walk with others). Please register here.

I hope that, with winter coming and bringing the usual mud, snow, ice and other terrain challenges, this post will encourage all our readers to persist in getting out and walking.  If only for a brisk 15-minutes.  Our bodies need the light too, as this recent Zoe podcast on our chronobiology in winter makes clear. But if you can’t get out, stair climbing is not a bad alternative!

For anyone wanting inspiration on where to snow-walk, you might like to read my piece in The Guardian.  As a lone, 60-something woman tramping for hours through snow, nowhere could feel safer than Switzerland! Although please do share any wintry locations you’ve enjoyed exercising in, using the comment box..

In my next post I’ll be updating you all on poles – and why we all need a pair. Something for the Christmas list perhaps?

Happy winter walking to you all!

Annabel