Exercises

14 Health Benefits of Walking and Running #1 Top Mental Treatments

How much money you should spend to be a membership in the most famous gym club in town? How much time you should spend just to reach the gym for a workout in a week? Well, do you know that just by doing walking and running regularly you could get all the health benefits you got from the time and money you’ve spend in the gym? It is true that for the sake of healthy lifestyle, people are doing everything to be part of the healthy circle mostly found in the gym club. However, being healthy is not about where you should go for a workout because healthy lifestyle is actually started from you and only you.

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Healthy Habit: Walking and Running. Healthy habit could be started anywhere but the most important factor is yourself. Walking and running are simple exercises that you could do from anywhere and anytime you want. They are completely free from charge and give you more benefits you could imagine. Some of them are even better than what you get from the gym. Indeed, here are the health benefits of walking and running:

  1. Helps You Burn Calories in More Effective Way

If you are doing walking and running regularly, you don’t need to worry anymore about excess calories in your body because walking and running is the most effective way to burn your calories. However, still you still need to make sure not consuming foods high in calories in daily basis as well or you need more time for walk and run to burn the calories.

  1. Lowers the Risk of Heart Diseases

During walking and running, your body will adjust to the rhythm caused by the movement. Not only your heart, others organ will work together too to join the movement. There are a lot of studies that have been proven that walking and running are able to lower the risk of heart diseases by eliminating the factors that cause it.

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  1. Reduces the Risk of Osteoporosis

Do you know that the more you move the lower the risk of osteoporosis is? Well, before it is too late, why don’t you start walking and running regularly? You could create a schedule to do the walk and run, after that you could say goodbye any conditions related to bone health like bone fractures and osteoporosis.

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  1. Friendly Exercise for Type 2 Diabetes Patient

Those who have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes are those who have problem with weight. The fat in your body will cause insulin could not work optimally to break down the glucose in the blood stream. As mentioned above, walking and running are simple exercise to burn calories and help you controlling your weight without forcing yourself to hard.

  1. Keeps You in Shape

There is no point anymore to do complicated maneuver from expensive equipment in the gym because just by walking and running regularly, you are not only able to stay healthy and control your weight but walking and running could help you keeping yourself in shape as well.

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  1. Improves Muscle Strength

Lifting heavy objects is not the only solution to improve your muscle strength. Surprisingly, the simple movement of walking and running could improve your muscle strength as well because during walking and running, all parts of your body are joining the movement from your feet, legs, hands, back and even your heads are all moving.

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  1. Prevents the Spike of Blood Pressure

Some studies have proven that there is significant effect of walking and running in controlling blood pressure. Some researchers have shown that the energy required to walk and run are affecting the metabolic equivalent that related to the spike and the low of blood pressure. However, if you are suffering severe condition, consulting your doctor first is highly recommended just to make sure you’re not overdoing it that could make your condition worse.

  1. Reduces Stress

From now on, you don’t need to worry anymore about how much stress you should get from around you because you will always have solution to deal with it. Whenever you feel stressful, just take your running shoes and have some walks and runs for a while. When you reached your home, you will forget about how stressful you were before.

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  1. Relieves Depression

Depression is a serious matter and if you have been diagnosed with this condition, try to do walking and running regularly to relieve the symptoms though professional assistant is still strongly required.

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  1. Makes You Happier

One of the benefits you could get from walking and running is those activities are releasing endorphins or hormone that responsible to the happy feeling. So, the more you walk and run, the more endorphins will be produced and the happier you will be.

  1. Improves Mental Health

Endorphins are actually one of the brain chemical that also contributes to your mental health. Simple example if you are feeling under pressure, try to release it by walking and running for a while, oxygen in your brain from the activities will make you feel much better physically and mentally.

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  1. Good for Self-Esteem

If you think endorphin are only making you happy, you should read more about this amazing brain chemical. Actually, endorphin are also responsible to your self-esteem. In other words, just by doing the walk and run regularly you could improve your confidence and be a better you.

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  1. Increases Productivity

There are a lot of reasons why people are not themselves while at work. Productivity is essential to your working career and what you need is an essential booster to increase your creativity and productivity and surprisingly, just by doing walking and running you could improve your body metabolism and build your self-esteem and mental health to boost your productivity.

  1. Great as Social Activities

How many people you meet when working out in the gym? A lot but only those who are joining the club. If you are walking and running in your neighborhood or in the park, you will meet more people, different people every time you do the activities. It makes walking and running great social activities. There are the health benefits of walking and running.

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How to Do Walking and Running in the Best Way?

Well, for your information, doing walking and running is not as simple as you think if you want to get optimal benefits of them. If you do it wrong, instead of benefits, those simple activities could be harmful for yourself. So, since you don’t have personal trainer like you have in the gym, at least you should follow some simple rules below to reduce the risk of injury, no matter how simple walking and running could be, especially for a beginner.

  • Don’t rush. You should plan the schedule first like two times a week for a beginner.
  • Making sure you have comfortable shoes for walking and running.
  • Learn about the stage you should follow like for beginner, you could start from steady walking with ratio 3 minutes walk and 1 minute run first for 15 minutes up to 30 minutes.
Stage 1 3 minutes walk 1 minute run
Stage 2 2 minutes walk 1 minute run
Stage 3 2 minutes walk 2 minutes run
  • After eight weeks your body will start to adjust with the ratio, you could add the time from 30 minutes up to 45 or 60 minutes and you will be more comfortable with more run and less walk with ratio as below:
Stage 4 4 minutes run – 1 minute walk
Stage 5 5 minutes run – 1 minute walk
Stage 6 6 minutes run – 1 minute walk
Stage 7 7 minutes run – 1 minute walk
Stage 8 8 minutes run – 1 minute walk
  • After stage 8, your body will be more comfortable with longer run time with less walk time. After stage 8, you also be able to adjust your pace whether you want to run faster or just keep the steady run. In this stage you could try to test your limit about how long you could run without the walk rest.

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Cautions You Should Aware of Walking and Running

As long as you are following the rules, the risk of injury could be reduced significantly. However, following the rule is not the only solution to avoid the side effects of walking and running.

  • Injury could occurs even to the professional. Stiff muscle is the reasons behind those injuries, that’s why before doing the walking and running, simple exercise to warm up your muscle is still necessary for you to do.
  • Walking and running is much better to do outside. It is actually one of the reasons why people avoid gym because they want to breathe the fresh air. Unfortunately, if the environment where you’re living is already contaminated with air pollution, perhaps you should consider to do the exercise in the gym instead.
  • The best time to do outdoor walking and running is in the morning or in the afternoon. You should avoid doing exercise outdoor at night when the air humidity could be harmful for your lung or during the day when the sun is high, dehydration could be dangerous for your body as well.
  • If you have a certain goal of doing walking and running, you have to make a plan first and stick to it. Overdoing it is just going to harm your body.

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So, there is no point of spending more money and time in the gym if you could enjoy the same benefits or even more benefits just by doing walking and running around your neighborhood. Furthermore, if the distant of where you live and where you work is not really far and could be reached by running, perhaps you could do the walking and running activities in daily basis to reach your work, with one note that in your office, there is facility where you could shower and change your clothes after the running session.

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