925: The Benefits of Walking: Health One Step at a Time (Solo Episode)

Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellness mama.com, and in this short solo episode, I wanted to delve into the topic of walking and get into some of the research backed specifics about its particular benefits, how to get the maximal advantage from walking if you integrate this as a habit, and why we as humans are meant to move more and walk more.

I recently did a social post about me wearing a weighted vest while walking, which has become a growing trend, but has been around for a very long time, and that post got quite a bit of attention. So I wanted to follow up with a podcast episode that touched more broadly on the benefits of walking, how to incorporate a weighted vest if you want to, and some considerations that often get missed.

I also wanna mention that walking is often overlooked in its tremendous benefits for health because it is so simple. And I talk a lot about this, that we often discount the simple things because of their simplicity. But there’s a lot of research that shows that walking is one of the most beneficial habits that you can integrate into your day.

And I think some of these free simple things can actually be some of the most profoundly helpful, especially when we create habits around them and do them regularly and get the benefits of compounding. In this, like I said, very short episode my goal is that by the end, you will clearly know how to maximize the benefits of walking, and we’ll talk about things from metabolism to mental health, to cardiovascular health and nervous system benefits, as well as things like lymphatic benefits.

So to just gently go into the science a little bit. From a human movement and evolution perspective, humans are biologically designed to walk long distances. It’s estimated that throughout history, humans have walked five to 10 miles per day in the course of hunting and gathering, and then in the course of normal activity and work.

And we know statistically, we often do not do that anymore. And I think this is one of the many things that falls under the category of Nature Deficit Disorder and kind of a divorce from the way we were designed to live and move within the world as humans. Now one thing that’s especially beneficial about walking is it is low impact and it engages the entire body because we are constantly stabilizing and using all muscles in different amounts when we’re walking.

This also has the benefit of promoting circulation and lymphatic movement, which is a topic I also will talk about in a podcast soon, and as well as joint support. And I’ve had guests before like Hunter Cook, talking about joint health and mobility, and he has something called CARs, which is controlled articular rotations, meaning just a quick daily practice to get full range of motion into each joint, which is actually how the joints get hydration and movement because they are not innervated.

Now another thing to differentiate here with walking is unlike high intensity exercise, it doesn’t carry the same stress on the body, which is why it can be a daily practice. And you might’ve heard me talk before about when I was in my intensive healing phase from Hashimoto’s and also from a lot of nervous system stuff I had going on I did not do any high intensity exercise. I was not lifting heavy weights. I was certainly not doing HIIT classes. I simply walked a lot, sometimes swam very gently in the ocean, but mostly just walked. And there’s a lot of research to back up the benefits of walking. There’s a whole category related to mental health and mood regulation, and this is one of the reasons I think walking is one of the best free tools we have at our disposal.

Statistically walking is shown to help alleviate some of the symptoms of anxiety and depression for some of the same reasons I talked about, with the increase in circulation and lymphatic movement, as well as just that all the endorphins can be released when we move our body in a way that we as humans we’re designed to walk.

There’s also data showing that a brisk walk can boost serotonin and dopamine levels, and I know there’s been more attention to these and to natural ways to boost them as well. There’s also a whole category of research that looks at metabolism and blood sugar regulation. And I’ve mentioned on here before that now estimates say that less than 10% of Americans are metabolically healthy. Or another way of saying that would be that over 90% of Americans have at least one marker of metabolic dysfunction, and walking is one of the kind of low hanging fruit of tools that we can implement to help address this. A study published in Diabetes Care found that walking after meals significantly lowers blood sugar levels, and this can be as little as walking just 10 minutes.

They showed that this can reduce blood sugar spikes by 12%. As you would expect, there’s also research showing the cardiovascular benefits of walking. In fact, a meta-analysis of studies involving over 400,000 people found that walking for 30 minutes a day can reduce heart disease risk by 31%.

I think that the nervous system benefits are also really compelling. I love that we’re hearing more about nervous system health. And about understanding the shift between sympathetic and parasympathetic and how this is very health supportive. And walking, especially in nature, again, tying into that nature deficit disorder: walking in nature stimulates the vagus nerve and can help activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes relaxation and lowering stress. And there’s some really fascinating images floating around of brain scans of people before and after just 30 minutes of walking, and how much it shifted their brain and nervous system activity.

This is also the reason we see cognitive benefits from walking, because walking enhances blood flow in the entire body, including in the brain, which has a positive effect on memory and cognitive function. There are many benefits beyond that, but I do wanna keep this episode short, so I will link to some follow up resources if you really wanna read about the benefits of walking, but I feel like it’s also relatively intuitive that humans were meant to move more, and that there can be tremendous benefit from adding this as part of our daily routine. I will also later in the episode get into specifics of kind of how to habit stack and to get additional benefit from walking if you integrate this as a daily habit.

Now, when it comes to how much we should walk, I want to address the idea of sort of that magic number of 10,000 steps that we often hear about because this is touted as very strong science and it’s actually not as like scientifically backed up as one might think. That popular 10,000 step goal actually originated from a Japanese marketing campaign, not from science.

However, like I said, there are tremendous benefits to walking, but what the data actually suggests is that even just 7 or 8,000 steps per day can reduce mortality risk by 50 to 70%, which is really staggering and there is slight additional benefit after that. But the threshold seems to be more in that 7  to 8,000 step range, not as high as 10,000.

And really the key here is consistency and intention rather than some arbitrary number. In other words, there’s not some specific magic that happens when we hit that exact 10,000th step. It is the cumulative benefit of doing it consistently. And if you wanted to try to hit that range of 7  to 8,000 steps, the good news is this can be done in very short, easy chunks of time throughout the day.

My preference is to, I’ve talked about before, get morning sunlight every morning and you can add a walk to this time, if you wanna have it stack the benefits. So even just a 10 or 20 minute, very gentle walk in the morning, will have the added benefit of helping kind of set the tone for circadian rhythm by also getting you natural light exposure, especially in those early morning hours where the red light intensity is especially strong and helps start circulation and lymphatic movement for the day.

Another time period where it can be especially beneficial is post meal walks, because I mentioned that that can help regulate blood sugar. So even just a 10 minute walk post meal can be really beneficial in blood sugar regulation. If it’s raining or you can’t walk, another alternative here that there are studies about is doing something as simple as maybe 30 or 40 air squats without weight, just with your body weight.

Those can be a little harder on the knee, so people who have joint issues, that might not be a great option. But if you are inside at work or it’s a rainy day, that is an easy way to also get the blood sugar benefits. And then I would say another kind of high impact time to walk would be in the evening, like again, a gentle walk as part of, kind of a wind down or relaxation routine in the evening especially, there’s always benefit right around that golden hour of sunset as well.

If you’re going to walk anyway and create this as a habit in your life, there are also some things you can do to Habit Stack that will create additional benefits from walking. This can be things like adding a weighted vest, and like I said, I did a post about this recently, which I will link to in the show notes.

The benefits here are that this can increase the metabolic load or the metabolic effect of walking by also increasing calorie burn. This can add an additional core stabilizing element because you have more weight on your upper body and there seems to be a benefit to bone density. I wanted to also address a comment on that post where someone said, if weighted vest were so helpful, then wouldn’t obese people have really good metabolic health and bone density? And there’s a little bit of nuance here, but in short, sort of, in that, when we carry more weight on our body, which I have done for various periods of my life, whether it be from pregnancy or from the extra weight during kinda my thyroid healing journey.

We do have potentially the benefit of strengthening our bones from the extra weight we are carrying. And so sometimes we can see that effect. There can be mitigating factors like inflammation, which can make it hard for bones to have all the necessary prerequisites to strengthen, and there can be other things related to excess weight that can be not as helpful to the body.

So there’s kind of a flux there. However, in general, yes, you might see a positive bone effect from times when you carry more weight, including from your body weight. The difference here is that with a weighted vest, obviously you’re wearing it for a short period of time and you can take it off and allow that adaptation to happen.

However, with body weight, it’s a little bit more difficult to do that, obviously. For people who want to get into weighted vest walking the data I’ve seen suggest starting light with only 5  to 10% of your body weight and gradually increasing. There are also sources who say it’s never needed to go above 3 to 5% of your body weight ever with a weighted vest.

I think this is really personal and goal dependent to what you want. So I started relatively light, for a long time I have used about a 30 to 36 pound weighted vest, and now actually have one that goes up to 60 pounds. I will mention that once carrying that much of ones percentage of body weight, it’s not quite the same.

That’s actually more in the category of kind of like rucking or hiking with a load. There are benefits there as well, but often that’ll take us into a higher zone when we’re working out, higher heart rate, higher metabolic expenditure, and so I kind of mix it up and do combinations of all of those. Also, typically, if I’m walking on sand or really soft ground, I’m not trying to add a ton of extra weight.

And either just walk without a weighted vest  or use a lighter weighted vest. There’s also the potential you can get benefit from walking barefoot from a foot health and proprioception perspective, and also from the earthing or grounding component, depending on how this is done. I’ve written about these before as well.

It is a little bit controversial, but there is some evidence that grounding and being in contact with the earth can improve mood by essentially connecting with the Earth’s natural electric charge. And that there might be a positive effect on inflammation as well. I personally love being barefoot, so anytime I can walk barefoot in the sand, walk barefoot on a trail, I try to do that.

I don’t like personally walking barefoot on concrete as it tends to be tough on the skin on my feet. However, my oldest son regularly goes for runs on concrete barefoot and has developed the form to be able to do that seemingly with no ill effects. I don’t recommend starting there. There’s also now wonderful minimalist shoe options, and these are what I often choose.

So my preference is not to do super minimalist shoes on really hard pavement or concrete. And like I said, I also prefer to walk on softer ground when possible. And my kind of go-tos there are right now Earth Runners, which are a type of sandal type shoe, which are great for trails, and I wear those almost exclusively when I hike.

And then there’s also a brand called Groundies, which is a more traditional looking sneaker type shoe, and I wear those when walking on pavement as well. They’re very minimalist, they don’t have a lot of padding, and they have an added grounding element. If you want to step up the benefits of walking, you can also do incline walking or hill walks, which as you would guess, means walking on a treadmill with an incline set higher or walking in a hilly environment.

And this will have the benefit of elevating heart rate more. There’s gonna be more of a glute and hamstring focus on inclines. And so there’s also a kind of more of a potential boost in metabolic rate here. So if you have less time and want to get more benefit, that’s when you can add something like a weighted vest or an incline walk.

I’ve also already touched on this a couple times, but a big fan of nature walks. The Japanese call this forest bathing. It can be as simple as walking in nature anywhere. But this practice seemingly lowers cortisol and reduces inflammation. I think this ties into that we are meant to spend more time in nature than we do, and that exposure to natural light and fresh air and movement, all in combination can have a really beneficial effect on the body.

So I know that thankfully things like treadmills are available. We can walk in doors if we want. I certainly do sometimes listen to an audio book or a podcast or take a phone call while walking indoors, but when possible, it’s awesome to get the additional nature benefits by walking outside. Also, I wanna just briefly touch on something called mindful walking, which is, as the name suggested, just being slightly more intentional about the walk, focusing on the breath, focusing on our foot placement or our posture and learning kind of the intention and the awareness of our body and different muscle groups as we walk. So I’ve done this for a while with trying to focus on the connection with, especially my glutes when I’m walking as this is an area where I’ve, in the past had like not as much connection in firing and other athletic things and I’ve been trying to work on. But walking meditation has also been shown to reduce stress and increase a sense of wellbeing.

So it’s funny to me that we’ve done so many studies actually to show the benefits of what I think is a very normal human activity of walking, but the data does support these benefits. Now, I’d like to talk about the best times to walk and why, and I touched on this briefly, but if you’re going to walk anyway, you might be able to get slightly more benefit depending on the time of day that you walk.

Morning walks are awesome, like I mentioned, because of the natural light component. If you’re doing them outside for boosting metabolism and for circadian rhythm. We know that exposing our eyes to natural light helps regulate melatonin production and can have a beneficial impact on sleep, especially the timing of that first light exposure in the morning, setting the clock for melatonin production via our melanopsin receptors in our eyes.

So this is a big one if you’re only gonna choose one, I would say choose a morning walk, or at least gentle movement outside in the natural light as soon as possible, either after waking up or after the sun rises. Post meal walks are also potentially more beneficial because they’re really helpful for blood sugar regulation, especially after meals where we consume a lot of carbohydrates and they can, they have a noticeable effect on blood sugar regulation.

I’ve noticed this while wearing a continuous glucose monitor that a short walk or I mentioned the air squats post meal helps to seem, it blunts the insulin and glucose spike after meals. And then evening walks have the additional benefit of helping calm the nervous system, having a beneficial effect on cortisol, and also can aid digestion.

We know that eating too close to bedtime can keep our heart rate elevated overnight while we are digesting, and so I try to stop eating by sunset when possible, but also a post dinner walk can help the digestion process and the blood sugar regulation process and lead to better sleep as well. My tip would be to try to walk at different times throughout the day, experiment what with what works for you and see which ones seem to help the most for you with stress, with metabolism, with your energy levels, and just integrate this as an easy, short habit.

You do not have to jump into walking for an hour a day or walking with a really heavy weighted vest. Just make this a easy, fun habit that you actually enjoy. If you do want to make walking a habit, which I think is also beneficial because again, a lot of these benefits come most from consistency, not intensity.

Some things you can do to gamify it. Obviously tracking your steps has gone through waves of popularity in the past and there are so many apps for this. I personally wear an Oura ring and it relatively accurately tracks activity levels, and it now can tell when I’m strength training versus swimming versus walking.

And that kind of at least gives me a rough gauge of how much I’ve walked in a given day. Also, anything you can do to make the walk enjoyable. Llisten to a podcast or an audiobook or music or just spend time alone with your thoughts. Bbut figure out what makes it fun for you so that you actually want to create this as a habit.

Another aspect of that could be to incorporate social walking. And my friends, Dr. Lauren Lax and Molly Eastman are experts at this. But if you are going to spend time with someone or meet up instead of just meeting at a coffee shop and sitting, grab the coffee and go for a walk. And I think these hour long social walks are awesome because they go by so quickly.

You get the added benefit of social connection, which we also know is tremendously beneficial for health, for mental health, for so many things, and it helps really to integrate the habit. I have a couple of local friends I love to walk with, and sometimes we’ll walk miles without even feeling like we’re exerting any effort because the social connection is there.

You can also help make this a habit by habit stacking. So you could, like I said, combine this with your morning sunlight or morning gratitude practice or morning journaling even. You can do verbal journaling with an app on your phone or with an evening wind down podcast or with social time, but anything that’s gonna already have something you love tied into it.

If you can combine that with walking, it’ll help the habit stick. And I also would recommend from a habit perspective to start really light, start with micro goals, maybe just 10 minutes a day. And learn to enjoy it and then add to it seemingly across the board when it comes to physical activity, when we jump in too much too fast, that’s when we tend to burn bright and then burn out quickly.

I know I’ve done that several times in my life with working out and wanting to go from zero to an hour of weightlifting, getting super sore, and eventually not sticking with it. Whereas when we slowly build habits, even less thanwe might want to in the beginning.

Then we get to look forward to the adding and it can stick as a habit a lot more. So key takeaways and final thoughts. Walking is one of the most accessible and effective ways to boost overall health, from heart health to mental wellbeing, nervous system health, lymphatic health, and so much more.

It’s also largely free and accessible to almost everyone. And you can modify it to fit your lifestyle, your goals, and obviously take into account any health conditions that you may have, as well as always, none of this medical advice. So check with a doctor if you have any specific health conditions or have been told not to exercise.

However, for most people, especially anybody who’s mobile, walking can be a really low impact way to get a lot of benefits.  Consistency really makes the difference when it comes to walking. One walk a month is not gonna do that much, but a short walk every day can do a tremendous amount. So focus on consistency and you can add in those intentional upgrades if you want to really compound the benefits, whether it is a morning walk in the sunlight, a post dinner stroll, a nature hike, there’s no right or wrong to walking. Just try to add this to your life in some form. And my challenge to you would be to just try adding a daily walk for a week and see how it impacts your energy level and your mood and what benefits you get from it.

As always, thank you so much for listening and for sharing your time with me. I don’t take it lightly that you share your most valuable resources with me when you listen to this podcast, your time, your energy, and your attention. I’m always so grateful that you do. I would love to hear what topics you would love me to talk about in future solo episodes.

And if you have time, I’m always super grateful when you leave a rating or review on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts, as that helps other people find this podcast and listen as well. For today, thank you so much for spending time with me and I hope you will join me again on the next episode of The Wellness Mama Podcast.