What You May Not Already Know About Walking for Better Health

  A resident of New York City for several decades, Barry Baldwin served with the NYC Transit Authority for nearly thirty years as a bus operator. Barry Baldwin enjoys a range of personal interests including listening to various genres of music, biking, weightlifting, and walking five miles per week.

Walking regularly is one of the best ways to maintain and improve your wellness, and a number of research insights have emerged regarding how walking impacts health. It’s widely known that walking helps to tone the cardiovascular system, improve bone strength, and calm the mind. However, walking speed also influences health and is believed by scientists to be a predictor for life span since they’ve found that faster walking improves longevity.

Walking with poles amplifies the benefits of walking by increasing the load on the cardiovascular system because the legs and arms must work harder. Other benefits of walking with poles are that they lower the chance of fracturing an ankle and reduce muscle soreness.

More recent research has demonstrated that walking in shoes with flexible and thin soles rather than thick-soled shoes may be better for people with arthritic knees, an idea that is contrary to what was previously thought. Walking in thin-soled shoes, much like being barefoot, may reduce pressure on the knee more than with thick-soled shoes.

Simple Exercises That Effectively Boost Circulation

Based in New York, Barry Baldwin has decades of experience in the transportation industry as a NYC Transit Authority bus operator. A fitness-focused individual, Barry Baldwin walks and cycles in New York when he has the chance, and also works out with light weights to keep his muscles in tone and circulation healthy.

With five quarts of blood passing through the blood vessels every minute, a well-functioning circulatory system is essential to deliver oxygen throughout the entire body, while also ensuring that waste is effectively eliminated. The simplest way to get blood pumping at the right level is through exercises that cause the heart muscle to contract at higher rates and move blood more rapidly through the cardiovascular system.

A combination of aerobic and resistance training is ideal, with the punch-and-twist being a popular combination. Mimicking a boxer’s stance, the exercise starts in a standing position and involves alternating arm punches as far out as possible, accompanied by a small twist of the spine each time. The extension and flexion of the elbows work out the arms and rotate the trunk in ways that also engage the diaphragm muscles.

Another circulation-improving exercise is the simple push-up, which combines cardio and resistance—elevating the heart rate while working out the upper body. Low-impact diaphragmatic breathing can also be effective in increasing circulation, as it stimulates the deep lymphatic structures that are essential in transferring waste materials and nutrients between the blood stream and tissues. This can be accomplished by lying on one’s back and placing one hand on the stomach and one on the chest. A sign of diaphragmatic breathing is when the hand on the belly rises with each breath, while the hand on the chest stays at a constant height.

Weightlifting Benefits and the Afterburn Effect

Afterburn Effect
Image: shape.com

Former machine operator Barry Baldwin served for decades as a bus operator for the New York City Transit Authority, during which time he received several safety awards. Outside of his professional work, Barry Baldwin enjoys staying active with activities that include walking, biking, and weightlifting.

Weightlifting, an activity that involves lifting heavyweights such as barbells, offers a wide range of health benefits. In addition to preventing injuries by improving bone density, weightlifting improves cardiovascular health, controls blood glucose levels, and enhances mental well being.

Weightlifting also helps with weight management by burning calories both during and after a workout. After lifting weights, an individual continues to burn calories as their body repairs itself. This physical state is known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption or the afterburn effect. Weightlifting breaks down muscle fibers, which the body then works to repair by taking in more oxygen while at an elevated metabolic rate. This physiological activity causes increased calorie burn even in a state of rest following weightlifting.

Five Proven Benefits of Exercise for Seniors and Aging Adults

A longtime resident of New York, Barry Baldwin spent nearly three decades serving with the NYC Transit Authority as a bus operator. Prior to this role, Barry Baldwin of New York held the position of mailroom machine operator at Chase Manhattan Bank. Mr. Baldwin is a music enthusiast and enjoys staying fit and active by bike riding, walking, and lifting light weights.

Being physically active provides several proven benefits for seniors and aging adults. Some of the key benefits exercise provides to this population according to research studies are described below.

1. Prevents disease. According to research conducted by several institutions such as the Universidade Estadual Paulista and the University of Missouri-Columbia, exercising regularly helps to prevent common diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. It also helps to boost immunity, which is important since elderly people often have reduced immune function.

2. Reduces the risk of falls. According to a study published in the British Medical Journal, seniors that participated in exercise programs aimed at preventing falls had a reduced rate of falls requiring medical care and lowered their risk for injuries caused by falling.

3. Enhanced cognitive function. Several studies prove that exercise lowers the risk of dementia. Research conducted at the University of British Columbia determined that regular aerobic exercise helps to increase the size of the hippocampus – loss of cells in the hippocampus is known to occur before the development of Alzheimer’s disease.