Devlin Brown at the water cooler: Be the one who walks 500 miles

You often reference walking. One tends to think about advanced training regimens and sports such as running when thinking about exercise. Does walking really matter that much?

If you had asked me this question when I was younger, I would have rolled my eyes and asked whether real exercise was something you actually intended to do. Walking! Me? Take a hike.

I used to say the king of all exercises was the squat. In truth, that’s the king of strength training. The king of all exercise is, surely, walking. Sorry, runners. What you do is great, with well-documented health benefits, it’s just that the most universal, and fundamental, movement is walking.

Next time you go to Hyde Park, Canal Walk or the pavements of Greenpoint, take a moment to observe how people are walking. Many South Africans wake up well before sunrise and walk long distances to catch public transport before needing to walk to their places of work. In all these different walking contexts, there are differences in people’s gaits.

And this difference in the speed at which people walk has been shown to hold clues to various important things, not least the brain’s age, adverse health event risk factors, neurological health, mortality and even intelligence. I always knew there was something wrong with the slouches dragging their feet at Cresta.

Jokes aside, it’s no laughing matter. Just read this opening paragraph in a recent BBC article about how walking speed is associated with health: “The speed at which you walk can reveal profound insights into your brain’s rate of ageing — with slower walkers having smaller brains and fundamental differences in crucial structures.”

The article suggests walking speed tests over 10m or 15m, a kind of self-assessment guide, to compare yourself to the global averages for men and women in different age brackets. However, what’s most interesting is the series of peer-reviewed studies that draw strong correlations between ageing, underlying health issues and even causality dating back to intelligence and motor function tests conducted in early childhood.

While the Water Cooler doesn’t like the idea of deterministic “markers” being used to differentiate between people’s cognitive abilities — society has had to deal with scientific chauvinism and racism for far too long — the fact that walking speed is a window into deeper physiological systems is fascinating.

The article references a University of Pittsburgh report which pooled nine studies that tracked more than 34,000 adults aged 65 and older. The study found that gait speed was strongly associated with lifespan. “Men with the slowest walking speeds at age 75 had a 19% chance of living for 10 years, compared to men with the fastest walking speeds who had an 87% chance of survival.”

Line Rasmussen, a researcher in the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, and colleagues analysed about 1,000 45 year olds who are part of a longitudinal study in New Zealand following people and conducting health tests across their lifespans.

What did they find? “Forty-five year olds with slower gait speeds showed signs of ‘accelerated ageing’, with their lungs, teeth and immune systems in poorer shape compared to those who walked faster. They also had ‘biomarkers’ associated with a faster rate of ageing, such as raised blood pressure, high cholesterol, and lower cardiorespiratory fitness. The study found that slow walkers had other signs of physical ill health, too, such as weaker handgrip strength and more difficulty rising from a chair.”

The point, one would imagine, is that paying attention to your gait, or the gait of people you love, could offer a window into what’s happening inside. It also reinforces just how important full health is for functional walking. While the article and scientists didn’t reverse the theory, it would make sense that regular brisk walking would benefit all those systems that, when they deteriorate, negatively affect walking.

Eyes observe and take cues from the environment, muscles, ligaments and tendons move the bones, the cardiovascular system circulates oxygen and removes waste products, and the nervous system co-ordinates it all. Done regularly, cardiovascular fitness would improve, the immune system would benefit, happiness would spike, and so much more.

Do yourself a favour, play The Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be through your ear pods, lace up the old tekkies and go for a walk.