This week Bobbi Conner talks with Dr. Erika Blank about the health benefits of walking daily or regularly for exercise. Dr. Blank is an Assistant Professor in the College of Medicine and a primary care physician, specializing in lifestyle medicine at MUSC.
TRANSCRIPT:
Conner: I'm Bobbi Conner for South Carolina Public Radio with Health Focus here at the radio studio for the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Walking daily or regularly for exercise has many powerful health benefits. Doctor Erika Blank is here to provide the details. Doctor Blank is an Assistant Professor in the College of Medicine, and she's a primary care physician specializing in lifestyle medicine at MUSC. Doctor Blank, tell us about the possible health benefits from a routine of daily or just frequent walking.
Dr. Blank: There is a lot of evidence of the health benefits of walking. Walking can improve your quality of sleep. It can improve your perceived quality of life in regard to your physical, mental, and emotional health. And, it also improves your physical functioning, and for an older person, this may be improving the risk of falls or fall related injuries, and may allow them to live independently for longer. And there is evidence that regular walking can help improve cognitive function and delay the risk for Alzheimer's disease.
Conner: How might walking help manage certain chronic conditions?
Dr. Blank: Overall, the biggest benefit of walking is a decrease in overall mortality as well as cardiovascular mortality. Walking can decrease the risk for high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol. It can help someone maintain a healthy weight. It is a weight bearing exercise, so also has a positive effect on bone health. Walking also can decrease anxiety and symptoms of depression, and it even decreases the risk for certain cancers.
Conner: And how much walking is really needed to reap these sorts of health benefits that you're describing.
Dr. Blank: Generally, I like to go by the American College of Sports Medicine's recommendation on physical activity for adults. That means 150 to 300 minutes per week of moderate aerobic activity, which includes brisk walking. The activity can be done in any way. It can be 30 minutes, five days a week, or 15 minutes twice a day, five days a week. We can also look at the total steps someone is walking. In general, higher step counts lead to larger decreases in mortality. There's an observational study from 2020 where they looked at step count and mortality. And the biggest decrease was when you increased your steps from 4000 to 8000 steps per day, with an even bigger decrease in mortality at 12,000 steps per day. That said, if somebody is sedentary and not moving at all, they still get a really big benefit from going from being sedentary to getting up to those 4000 steps a day.
Conner: And for someone who lives a more sedentary life right now, but they want to get started with walking, how should they begin?
Dr. Blank: If somebody is really sedentary, and has some cardiovascular risks like high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, it's a good idea to check with their doctor before starting on any new activity. And whatever you do, you can start very slow with a few minutes a day, 5 or 10 minutes and just, you know, build from there.
Conner: Doctor Blank, thanks for this information about the health benefits of walking.
Dr. Blank: Thank you.
Conner: From the radio studio for the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, I'm Bobbi Conner for South Carolina Public Radio.
Health Focus transcripts are intended to accurately represent the original audio version of the program; however, some discrepancies or inaccuracies may exist. The audio format serves as the official record of Health Focus programming.
