Walking - Safe upper limit?

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Walking - Safe upper limit?

Postby Drew_ab » Mon Feb 09, 2015 8:39 am

I'm wondering what your thoughts are about the safe upper limit for walking. Is there anything wrong with walking 45-60min twice per day? As far as I know, this would actually be fairly healthy but would like to hear others thoughts.

I'm currently weight training about 2hrs per week, along with 1hr of flexibility/yoga, 1 hr of vigorous activity like running, and 2 hours of meditation (mind exercise).

Thoughts?
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Re: Walking - Safe upper limit?

Postby roundcoconut » Mon Feb 09, 2015 8:53 am

I actually think that a day composed of all different kinds of movement (including many hours of walking) is an ideal we can all use as our framework of good health.

So, if you were on your feet, moving around for more than 14 hours per day, I would worry. But two hours of walking does not seem excessive to me, except that in a culture like ours, surely someone is willing to step up to pathologize and marginalize you for it. (Don't listen to them!)

Have you heard that someone made up the term "Sedentary Death Syndrome" to describe the pattern of mood disorders, tight painful muscle patterns, lack of energy, disease and disability that accompanies a lifestyle where "sedentary" is the norm and everything else is construed as "exercise". It is a trip. We should limit our hours of sedentary time as much as possible, rather than the reverse.

There are many people (service industry for example) who work on their feet for a 10-hour shift. It feels good to have that much movement in your day. Honest!
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Re: Walking - Safe upper limit?

Postby Gershon » Thu May 14, 2015 10:39 am

Drew_ab wrote:I'm wondering what your thoughts are about the safe upper limit for walking. Is there anything wrong with walking 45-60min twice per day? As far as I know, this would actually be fairly healthy but would like to hear others thoughts.

I'm currently weight training about 2hrs per week, along with 1hr of flexibility/yoga, 1 hr of vigorous activity like running, and 2 hours of meditation (mind exercise).

Thoughts?


Let's assume you pass all the medical warnings.

I'd suggest working up to the goal you are looking at. The feet and knees must make many adjustments to walk this long each day. It may take a couple years to get there. The only suggestion I have is not to ignore even minor pain in the feet or the knees. These are warnings to reduce your miles and if you ignore them, you may incur a serious chronic injury.
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Re: Walking - Safe upper limit?

Postby Drew_ab » Fri May 15, 2015 6:05 am

Gershon wrote:
Drew_ab wrote:I'm wondering what your thoughts are about the safe upper limit for walking. Is there anything wrong with walking 45-60min twice per day? As far as I know, this would actually be fairly healthy but would like to hear others thoughts.

I'm currently weight training about 2hrs per week, along with 1hr of flexibility/yoga, 1 hr of vigorous activity like running, and 2 hours of meditation (mind exercise).

Thoughts?


Let's assume you pass all the medical warnings.

I'd suggest working up to the goal you are looking at. The feet and knees must make many adjustments to walk this long each day. It may take a couple years to get there. The only suggestion I have is not to ignore even minor pain in the feet or the knees. These are warnings to reduce your miles and if you ignore them, you may incur a serious chronic injury.


This is probably sound advice.
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Re: Walking - Safe upper limit?

Postby Drew_ab » Tue Dec 22, 2015 8:30 am

As a follow up to this old thread of mine, I noticed that Dr. Greger walks 15 miles daily on a treadmill desk. If it's good enough for him, I think I can be comfortable with the 6-9 miles daily that I walk. Dr. Greger has referenced that he walks that much in a few of his videos, and he also referenced it in his new book How Not To Die.
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Re: Walking - Safe upper limit?

Postby JeffN » Tue Dec 22, 2015 8:35 am

Drew_ab wrote:As a follow up to this old thread of mine, I noticed that Dr. Greger walks 15 miles daily on a treadmill desk. If it's good enough for him, I think I can be comfortable with the 6-9 miles daily that I walk. Dr. Greger has referenced that he walks that much in a few of his videos, and he also referenced it in his new book How Not To Die.


viewtopic.php?f=22&t=43482&start=15#p519482

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Re: Walking - Safe upper limit?

Postby petero » Wed Dec 23, 2015 9:13 pm

Jeff, I trust & follow your advice most of all, but what if, in this case, I played devil's advocate a little with the interpretation?

Those curves are interesting. It's nice to see that walking doesn't have a negative-parabola shaped pattern like running. As for running, even if running "dosage" exhibited symmetry (a worst-case scenario I would think), it wouldn't cross the walking curve until ~65 minutes a day, or 455 minutes of running a week, or, say, 56 miles a week at an 8:00 pace. So you wouldn't be worse off than a walker until you hit around 56 miles per week of running, which is a high amount of vigorous activity. (8 miles a day every day on average.) And you would be better off as a runner until then.

The text of the latest study is interesting. The claims seems to be that increased doses are not associated with increased benefits (after a certain threshold). Perfectly reasonable. Walking seems to approach a limit of 35% reduction in mortality. Given the language in the papers, though, it sounds like they aren't super willing to assert that there are serious detriments to lots of physical activity. And, since exercise has other benefits besides lowering mortality (e.g. burning calories), I would think there is no serious reason for most people to limit it unless it's at a really high amount.

Exercise is Medicine at Any Dose? wrote:Increasing from the minimum effective levels of moderate (15 minutes a day) or vigorous intensity (8 minutes a day) physical activity to the national physical activity guidelines of 30 minutes a day of moderate-intensity exercise or 75 minutes a week of vigorous intensity exercise appears to be associated with increased health benefits. Every additional 15 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity was associated with a 4% further reduction of all-cause mortality over 13 years in the Taiwanese population.

These benefits were independent of age, sex, and cardiovascular history. The greatest benefit was obtained by the most active individuals (63-88 minutes a day), with higher mortality reductions for vigorous-intensity vs moderate-intensity exercise.

Similar findings were observed in US and European cohorts. Individuals performing physical activity at a dose of 3 to 5 times the current recommendations reported the lowest mortality rates over 14.2 years.
It's easy to be a naive idealist. It's easy to be a cynical realist. It's quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame. -- Marie-Louise von Franz
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Re: Walking - Safe upper limit?

Postby JeffN » Thu Dec 24, 2015 9:27 am

petero wrote: Jeff, I trust & follow your advice most of all,


Thank you.

petero wrote: but what if, in this case, I played devil's advocate a little with the interpretation?


Sure, but if you don't mind, please re-post this in my forum so you and I can have the discussion as it is a good question.

Thanks!

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Re: Walking - Safe upper limit?

Postby MINNIE » Fri Mar 04, 2016 10:53 am

I'm wondering what your thoughts are about the safe upper limit for walking. Is there anything wrong with walking 45-60min twice per day? As far as I know, this would actually be fairly healthy but would like to hear others thoughts.

I'm currently weight training about 2hrs per week, along with 1hr of flexibility/yoga, 1 hr of vigorous activity like running, and 2 hours of meditation (mind exercise).

Thoughts?


Just curious. Were you concerned about adding this to your regular exercise load because if the time involved? Or because of an injury? I don't understand how walking can be bad, if there is no joint injury or other physical limitation.

I'm not claiming to be an expert. I don't know if it's healthy or not, or what an upper limit might be.

But I what do know is that I walk at least two hours nearly every day, usually in one-hour increments. It's great! It's almost a life-long habit for me and I just love to walk as often and as far as I have time for. I am 69 years old, still walking, and have never seen any negative effects. I do other exercises too, but walking is the most important (for me).

The mental clarity it can give is awesome, aside from whatever fitness value it has. Walking meditation, should you chose to try it, can be wonderful. I can't stand to sit (as it were) but walking takes my mind to a way better place than anything else ever did. (I'm kind of an old hippy, and I'll let you guess what the "everything else" might have included).

Humans may like to run, but we are born - and built - to walk :-D
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