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When it comes to walking and type 2 diabetes risk, it’s not just how much you do it that helps — it’s also how fast you move, a new study has found. Brisk walking is associated with a nearly 40% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life, according to the study published Tuesday in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
“Previous studies have indicated that frequent walking was associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the general population, in a way that those with more time spent walking per day were at a lower risk,” said the study’s lead author Dr. Ahmad Jayedi, a research assistant at the Social Determinants of Health Research Center at the Semnan University of Medical Sciences in Iran……Story continues….
Source: Walking pace could impact diabetes risk, study finds | CNN
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Regular, brisk exercise can improve confidence, stamina, energy, weight control and may reduce stress. Scientific studies have also shown that walking may be beneficial for the mind, improving memory skills, learning ability, concentration, mood, creativity, and abstract reasoning. Sustained walking sessions for a minimum period of thirty to sixty minutes a day, five days a week, with the correct walking posture may improve health.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s fact sheet on the “Relationship of Walking to Mortality Among U.S. Adults with Diabetes” states that those with diabetes who walked for two or more hours a week lowered their mortality rate from all causes by 39 percent. Women who took 4,500 steps to 7,500 steps a day seemed to have fewer premature deaths compared to those who only took 2,700 steps a day.
“Walking lengthened the life of people with diabetes regardless of age, sex, race, body mass index, length of time since diagnosis and presence of complications or functional limitations.” One limited study found preliminary evidence of a relationship between the speed of walking and health, and that the best results are obtained with a speed of more than 2.5 mph (4.0 km/h).
A 2023 study by the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, the largest study to date, found that walking at least 2,337 steps a day reduced the risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases, and that 3,967 steps a day reduced the risk of dying from any cause. Benefits continued to increase with more steps. James Leiper, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said that if the benefits of walking could be sold as a medicine “we would be hailing it as a wonder drug”.
Human walking is accomplished with a strategy called the double pendulum. During forward motion, the leg that leaves the ground swings forward from the hip. This sweep is the first pendulum. Then the leg strikes the ground with the heel and rolls through to the toe in a motion described as an inverted pendulum. The motion of the two legs is coordinated so that one foot or the other is always in contact with the ground.
While walking, the muscles of the calf contract, raising the body’s center of mass, while this muscle is contracted, potential energy is stored. Then gravity pulls the body forward and down onto the other leg and the potential energy is then transformed into kinetic energy. The process of human walking can save approximately sixty-five percent of the energy used by utilizing gravity in forward motion. Walking differs from a running gait in a number of ways.
The most obvious is that during walking one leg always stays on the ground while the other is swinging. In running there is typically a ballistic phase where the runner is airborne with both feet in the air (for bipedals). Another difference concerns the movement of the centre of mass of the body. In walking the body “vaults” over the leg on the ground, raising the centre of mass to its highest point as the leg passes the vertical, and dropping it to the lowest as the legs are spread apart.
Essentially kinetic energy of forward motion is constantly being traded for a rise in potential energy. This is reversed in running where the centre of mass is at its lowest as the leg is vertical. This is because the impact of landing from the ballistic phase is absorbed by bending the leg and consequently storing energy in muscles and tendons. In running there is a conversion between kinetic, potential, and elastic energy.
There is an absolute limit on an individual’s speed of walking (without special techniques such as those employed in speed walking) due to the upwards acceleration of the centre of mass during a stride – if it is greater than the acceleration due to gravity the person will become airborne as they vault over the leg on the ground.
Typically, however, animals switch to a run at a lower speed than this due to energy efficiencies. Based on the 2D inverted pendulum model of walking, there are at least five physical constraints that place fundamental limits on walking like an inverted pendulum. These constraints are: take-off constraint, sliding constraint, fall-back constraint, steady-state constraint, high step-frequency constraint.
Many people enjoy walking as a recreation in the mainly urban modern world, and it is one of the best forms of exercise. For some, walking is a way to enjoy nature and the outdoors; and for others the physical, sporting and endurance aspect is more important. There are a variety of different kinds of walking, including bushwalking, racewalking, beach walking, hillwalking, volksmarching, Nordic walking, trekking, dog walking and hiking.
Some people prefer to walk indoors on a treadmill, or in a gym, and fitness walkers and others may use a pedometer to count their steps. Hiking is the usual word used in Canada, the United States and South Africa for long vigorous walks; similar walks are called tramps in New Zealand, or hill walking or just walking in Australia, the UK and the Irish Republic.
In the UK, rambling is also used. Australians also bushwalk. In English-speaking parts of North America, the term walking is used for short walks, especially in towns and cities. Snow shoeing is walking in snow; a slightly different gait is required compared with regular walking.
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