Step It Up
Get more out of your daily walk with these suggestions
Heidi Godman
Harvard Health Publications
Walking is great for overall health. Regular, brisk walking helps lower LDL (bad) cholesterol, control blood pressure, strengthen muscles, burn calories and lift mood. Walking can also help ward off high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
And you can get even more health benefits by adding a few simple upgrades to your daily walk.
Promote healthy bones and muscles: The more gentle stress we place on our bones, the stronger they’ll become. The reason: Exerting force on the bones stimulates them to add cells, which speeds up the process of building bone mass.
Weight-bearing exercise is a standard way to strengthen your bones, and walking is a weight-bearing activity. Weightlifting is also a good way to strengthen bones. You can combine the two activities for extra oomph by wearing a weighted vest on your walk.
Get one that allows you to adjust the amount of weight you’ll carry, such as a vest that has removable weights. You can find them for about $40 or more online or at sporting-goods stores.
How much weight should you carry in the vest? “Start with 5 pounds,” suggests Vijay Daryanani, a physical therapist at Harvard-affiliated Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. “After two weeks, increase the weight to 7.5 pounds. Two weeks later, move up to 10 pounds. But don’t wear the vest if it makes it hard to walk or if you experience any pain or soreness after wearing it.”
Make your heart work harder: Walking at a brisk pace is a moderate-intensity activity that makes your heart and lungs work harder. The exertion activates changes in your muscles, metabolism, blood vessels and brain that contribute to improved heart health.
Your heart and lungs work even harder (and get even more benefit) with vigorous activity — the kind that makes it difficult to talk while working out, such as playing tennis or jogging. But check with your doctor before starting a program of vigorous activity.
One way to make your heart work harder on a walk is by adding arm movements.
About 10 minutes into a 30-minute walk, begin raising your arms up and down repeatedly in any way that feels comfortable — such as straight out in front of you (like a sleepwalker in old movies), above your head (like a referee signaling a touchdown) or out to the sides (like you’re flying). Try to maintain the arm activity as long as possible, up to 10 minutes. Then continue your walk for another 10 minutes.
Another way to make your heart work harder on your walk is by adding high-intensity interval training. HIIT involves brief bouts of strenuous exercise. It’s associated with equal or greater improvements in blood pressure and blood sugar compared with moderate-intensity exercise. But, again, check with your doctor.
During a walk, that would mean periodically breaking into a run for about 30 to 60 seconds. The easier this becomes, the longer the high-intensity intervals can last.
Eventually, you may be able to walk for five minutes, then run for five minutes, alternating the activities for about 30 minutes.
Improve your balance: Your sense of balance is based in the brain.
“The brain integrates information from your inner ear organs, vision and nerve endings and feelings in the feet, muscles and joints, all the way up the spine,” says Dr. Steven Rauch, medical director of the Balance and Vestibular Center at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts Eye and Ear.
To maintain good balance, you need to put it to work regularly. Taking a daily brisk walk is good practice. If walking is easy for you, Rauch suggests making it a little harder, to get even more practice and potentially get better at balancing.
For example, during a walk you could periodically take about 10 steps walking heelto-toe. “The narrower your base of support when standing, the trickier it is to maintain your balance,” Rauch says.
Other ideas: Turn sideways, and take 10 side steps. Or keep walking forward, but turn your head slowly left and then right, a few times in a row. “If you’re walking in a certain direction but turn and look in a different direction, or aim your ears in a different direction, you’re not giving the usual visual or auditory feedback to the brain, and it challenges your balance,” Rauch says.
Taming Traveler's Tummy
Maureen Salamon
Harvard Health Publishing
Travel is meant to transport you far from the same-old, same-old. But when you’re not eating the same foods and sleeping on the same schedule (or even in the same time zone), the ripple effects on digestion can be fierce.
With more nerve cells than many parts of the central nervous system, including the spinal cord, our gut knows when we’re off our routine, says Dr. Kyle Staller, a gastroenterologist at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Our bodies, including our gastrointestinal tract, respond to circadian rhythms — day-and-night cues,” he says. “Your colon will sleep when you sleep and wake up when you do. If those times are shifted by travel and changing time zones, digestion can get thrown off.”
Factor in heavy meals, alcohol or dehydration from flying, and “it’s sort of a perfect storm to cause digestive problems,” Staller says.
Keep digestion humming: Staller offers these strategies to keep indigestion, diarrhea and constipation at bay:
- Plan ahead: Scope out restaurants and menus beforehand to make sure at least one item seems both palatable and easy to digest. “This is more difficult, though, if you’re more of a spontaneous traveler or staying in someone’s home,” he says.
- Assemble a “control kit”: Bring along a variety of over-thecounter products to counteract digestive woes on the road. Good choices include antacids (such as Tums) for heartburn; bismuth subsalicylate (Pepto-Bismol, Kaopectate) for indigestion or diarrhea; docusate sodium (Colace, Surfak), psyllium (Metamucil) or bisacodyl (Dulcolax) for constipation; and loperamide (Imodium) for diarrhea. But don’t use loperamide if you also have signs of infection such as fever or blood in your stool, Staller says. Instead, see a doctor.
- Pack familiar snacks: Whether that’s granola bars, nuts, trail mix or dried fruit, these items should be filling. “There’s no onesize-fits-all recommendation, but pick things you might eat at home as a quick snack or even a meal substitute in case you notice that everything at your location is going to disagree with you,” he says.
- Eat street food with caution: Local delicacies or foodtruck cuisine are more apt to contain harmful bacteria. “This isn’t fun, because some of the tastiest food is street food,” Staller says. “But if you indulge, know you’re taking that risk. If you’re easily derailed by digestive issues, street food is a no-go.”
- Skip local water and ice: “In the developing world, assume the water isn’t safe unless it’s from a bottle,” he says. Instead, drink only what comes in cans or bottles.
Southwest Montana Health Care Directory
