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In order to have a healthy lifestyle, it is of utmost importance to do some exercise. No matter how good your diet is, you will always be at risk of developing certain conditions unless you start moving.
There are many people who feel that, for certain reasons, they are not able to work out at the gym or start jogging in the morning. However, walking is something almost anyone can do and, it turns out, it is incredibly healthy.
A team of researchers have recently pointed out a lot of benefits walking has, especially if it associated with a healthy diet. The American College of Sports Medicine has started calling for actions that could improve the lifestyle of as many communities as possible in the United States. The aim is to make Americans become more active .
Last week, the Surgeon General himself, Vivek Murthy has also issued an encouragement for people living in the United States to start walking in order to avoid suffering from diseases such as diabetes, which is more likely to develop if the person is obese, and heart disease, which is also linked to obesity and is currently the leading cause of death in America.
According to him, only 50 percent of the American adults do enough exercise to protect themselves from the harmful effects of these diseases.
Health experts currently recommend that we do at least 22 minutes of moderate activity every day. This is approximately the equivalent of 150 minutes per week. Walking about half an hour on a daily basis could easily solve the problem.
The only issue is that many areas in the United States are unwalkable, which means that most people need to drive or to take the bus in order to get to different places. Those who decide to walk to different places are at risk of getting injured or even die after being hit by buses or cars that usually travel at very high speed.
This is why many Americans have “lost the culture of physical activity”, which in turn, led to even higher obesity rates. Now, more than half of the people living in America are overweight, according to the NIH (National Institute of Health). Moreover, about 70 percent of the Americans die from chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity.
“It turns out the most powerful way we can turn the tide on chronic disease is something we have been doing for millennia: That is walking,” said Murthy.
Therefore, he called to all major communities to do more to create walking areas and also make them wheelchair accessible for people with disabilities. Gyms are not always affordable to everyone, so many health experts now recommend walking as a very useful physical activity that should be available to everyone.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is now taking into consideration creating mobility standards that might allow local communities to implement sidewalk improvement projects to give people a chance to exercise more.
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