So many people look at walking as a very trivial thing and sometimes they ‘ll think it’s just kind of a waste of time because think about how much productionor productive things you can do in place of you know walking for 45 minutes well after today’s video that might change your mind because walking is probably one of the most therapeutic things you can do and the majority of these benefits I’m going to talk about related to walking are things that you probably have never heard before I mean we know walking helps you you know maybe lose some weight maybe reduce stress but how does it reduce stress that’s the
Walking benefits
Question the first point when you walk you significantly lower your cortisol levels even after a 20 minute walk so what does this mean when you have high levels of cortisol your body is in this adapt mode
it’s adapting your physiology to your environment to stress so walking turns off that mechanism so you’re less in this flutter fight sympathetic dominance mode in more in the parasympathetic so that’s why you feel calmer that’s why you feel less stressed because now the body is not
stuck in this uh stress reaction mode and so with lower levels of cortisol and adrenaline you’re going to feel better even on DNA testing there’s a certain Gene that causes the person to hold onto Adrenaline longer okay and the remedy for that is to exercise and flush it out not necessarily always high intensity but some low intensity long walks all right number two which relates to number one you’re going to have improved creativity and what I mean by that is more creative thinking think about this when you’re in stress mode and you have high levels of cortisol what is your level of creativity it’s pretty low it’s almost impossible to becreative when you’re under stress when you have high levels of cortisol and this definitely relates to problem solving as well because when you solve problems you need creativity and when you have stress you’re not really good at solving problems like you would if you were more calm and you had more creativity going on a long walk gives you this new space this ability to look at things a little bit easier it gives you space between you and the problem so the problem is not like all up here you have space now you can kind of look at it you can kind of play with it you can come up with Solutions number three
which relates to number two this is going to affect your overall mood you’re going to have less anxiety you’d be lessde pressed all right number four the mitochondria inside your cells which is the energy Factory and most diseases are associated with damaged mitochondria they call it a problem with your metabolism and that really relates to how well that your cells are fed Fuel and you get oxygen and Etc so when you go on long walks you enhance the quality of mitochondria you enhance the numbers of mitochondria mitochondria become more efficient at burning fuel and the better your mitochondria work the less diseases you’ll have number five and this is interesting exercise especially walking increases
microbial diversity you’ll have more diverse types of microbes that’s pretty wild which is going to help a lot of things it’s going to help your immune system it’s going to help your digestion it’s going to help your energy and number six walking improves or increases your endogenous antioxidants what doesendogenous mean it means something from within in other words your body has the ability to create antioxidants and when you do walks you actually create more o f your own antioxidants and this is nothing to do with what you’re eating your body’s just making more antioxidant networks which is going to help you fight off free radicals it’s going to actually help with longevity it’s going to help prevent a lot of problems all right number seven walking actually increases your natural killer cells these are part of the immune system and they actually
kill cancer cells and viruses well walking increases the natural killer cells all right number eight walking improves insulin and glucose sensitivity so if you have insulin resistance if you have a problem with glucose walking improves this to the point where it can significantly decrease there sistance to insulin which is going to help your blood sugar so if you’re adiabetic or a pre-diabetic walking is awesome and even if you have the dawnphenomena where you wake up in the morning and your blood sugars are high going for a long walk can burn off that sugar and that’s what happens for the irst I don’t know about 25-30 minutes is you burn off all this extra sugar you have and then you start burning fat all right number nine
and this isum interesting because yes it is true when you walk you get more oxygen but it’s not about getting more oxygen in your blood it’s about what happens between your blood cells and your tissue cells are you absorbing more oxygen from that blood saturation okay like even if you do an intense workout where you’re breathing heavily right you think you’re getting all this air but it’s kind of like having a cup that’s filled with water and then you try to add more water to it it’s already filled it jus kind of flows over that’s what happens when you exercise intensely when you’ re over breathing you’re getting all this
oxygen but it’s not being delivered into the tissues in fact you probably feel like you have to breathe harder to get more oxygen into the tissues but here’s the key it is true that you need oxygen right but to deliver and transport that oxygenCO2 is needed CO2 is not just a waste product it’s essential to make sure that oxygen is delivered in deep into the tissues so whereas certain type of height intensity exercise is good for certain thing s walking is good for getting oxygen deep into the cells because you’re not breathing too much you’re not flooding your body with too much oxygen you’re getting a nice balance of oxygen and CO2which is the key to deliver that oxy gene specially if you breathe through your nose okay you’ll get like 20 more oxygen f you’re walking and for people that walk maybe a little bit faster they are generating lactic acid and that acidtends to inhibit oxygen so what happens in your blood is you have certain things that are alkaline they’re calle dbicarbonates and that’s going to help neutralize dyslactic acid fairly quickly and then the byproduct chemistry of that is H2O water and carbon dioxide so your body actually is getting CO2 from that process as well all right number 10 bone density increases when walking interesting
