Walking about 30 minutes a day has important benefits for our health. Thanks to that half hour of brisk walking we achieve better cardiovascular health thus reducing the chances of suffering a myocardial infarction, diabetes, strokes and high blood pressure.
WHO recommendation
As little as 30 minutes a day, that is what the World Health Organization recommends to maintain a healthy and active life. However, a study conducted by the WHO itself shows that only 55% of the world’s population walks for the recommended half hour a day.
Not only is the duration of exercise not enough, but the data from the study presented by the European Heart Network (EHN) show that in countries such as the USA and the United Kingdom people walk much more slowly than in developing countries where the majority of the population does walk 30 minutes a day and, moreover, does so at a brisk pace.
One of the main problems is that the population is not aware of the time they spend walking and, when they do, they do not bother to follow a good pace but opt for walking instead. The recommendation is to set a route and force ourselves to do it every day at a good pace. “Awareness is the first step to a healthy heart. Paying attention to how much we walk should be as simple as watching what we eat,” said the scientific director of the World Heart Federation, Dr. Kathryn Taubert.
People who are aware of how much they walk have a great advantage when it comes to improving their health. In this line, the WHO study points out that those who use pedometers that allow them to keep track of their pace increase their physical activity by more than 25%, thus achieving important benefits for their body.
Longer life expectancy
If we don’t want to walk, there are no excuses. It is enough to do some activity that activates the body. The key is to dedicate at least 15 minutes of our daily life to physical exercise. In this way we will drastically reduce the risk of suffering cardiovascular diseases, which translates into a longer life expectancy. In fact, there are many studies that claim that doing moderate physical exercise every day is equivalent to three more years of life.