Walking for a Healthy Heart
Simple exercise such as regular walking can improve our health in many ways
Walking, jogging or running are excellent ways of staying healthy. Walking for 30 minutes, four-five times a week will also help you to stay heart-healthy. There are several studies that show that walking improves health in people with heart disease, emphysema, chronic kidney disease, cancer and depression. So it’s not necessary to belong to an expensive gym to get the health benefits that we need.
When is the best time to exercise? Ideally during the first half of the day. Exercising just before bedtime can be too stimulating, making sleep more difficult. Exercising in bright morning light also helps with falling asleep at night.
Shouldn’t you warm up before you run? This has been debated for years with no good studies to answer the questions of whether we should even warm up or how to warm up. Most recently there have been opinions that warming up before walking, jogging or running does not improve your performance.
Another injury concern regarding walking, jogging or running is blister prevention. Today the most popular strategy for blister prevention is paper taping of your feet. This prevention strategy is used by many serious runners, as noted in The Blister Blog written by Rebecca Ruston, an Australian podiatrist. Dr. Grant Lipman, a Stanford emergency medicine physician is also a believer in paper taping for blister prevention.
Include walking, jogging or running in your health care routine and try to do this at least two-three hours before bedtime. Whether you warm up or not is up to you and always have your roll of paper tape on hand.
Dan Walters is an American general physician, who is just opening his clinic at Plaza Paraiso C40 between Avenida 15 and 10. Contact him via his website: http://doctoramericanomd.com/ or simply drop by his clinic.
