The health benefits of walking are truly out of this world, beating any gym, spa, surgery or miracle cure – as science keeps revealing.
1 Walking makes you mentally healthier
One in six of us has had a common mental health problem in the past week. But walking has a three-card trick that makes it just as effective as medication (and a lot more fun). Dr David Crepaz-Keay from the Mental Health Foundation says it helps first by releasing your happy hormones and balancing your cortisol levels that help you to manage stress.
The second is by getting you into nature. And the third is the social connection we get from walking. “Walking is like the oats of the exercise world – it elevates your mood in a sustained way,” says David. Research from the University of Gothenburg revealed walking as little as two hours per week cuts your chance of developing depression in future by 63%, while the Mental Health Foundation says just 10 minutes of brisk walking will increase your mental alertness, energy and positive mood.
2 Walking improves your vision
Glaucoma is a serious eye condition that can lead to blindness, but regular jaunts in the great outdoors will slash your chances of getting it by an extraordinary 73%.
Walking also reduces your chance of developing cataracts, and increases the blood flow to your retina and optic nerve. And by walking more you also increase the activity in your visual cortex – meaning you see and comprehend more than pre-#walk1000miles you.
3 Walking is our most powerful weapon against cancer
“The statistics are very clear,” says professor Scarlett McNally, author of the report Exercise: The Miracle Cure. “Being active is the primary prevention for cancer. It reduces the risk of cancer across the board by 25-30%. In bowel cancer it reduces the risk by 45%.”
And for those living with cancer, “It helps you cope with the side effects, improves fatigue, muscle bulk, has an effect on the immune function and your metabolism, and it gives you the empowering feeling of achieving something.”
1000-miler Sue Sanders from Warwickshire can vouch for it: “I firmly believe regular walking helped in my recovery. It’s become a vital part of my life and helps both my physical and mental health.”
4 Walking is a diabetes destroyer
Walking 30 minutes each day reduces your risk of type 2 diabetes by 50%. It can also provide miraculous results for those who already have it. “Walking on its own is a huge determinant of someone’s health,” says Neil Gibson from Diabetes UK. “It can helps people go into remission, but it also decreases the risk of complications, such as kidney and foot problems, and lowers your blood pressure. It ensures people live much better.”
1000-miler Tracey White is one who can vouch for it: “I’ve lost five stone and totally reversed the need to take my medication for diabetes,” she says.
5 Walking can prevent dementia
Once regarded as an inevitable symptom of ageing, we now know that walking can stop dementia. Regular walking in middle age cuts your risk of dementia by 30%, and Alzheimer’s disease by 40%.
Says Dr Sara Imarisio of Alzheimer’s Research UK, “When your heart is pumping faster, more oxygen is going to the brain, and your brain is more active than usual. The regularity of walking is crucially important.” As neuroscientist Professor Wendy Suzuki puts it more starkly still: “Simply moving your body has immediate, long-lasting, and protective benefits for your brain that can last for the rest of your life.”
Being part of the #walk1000miles community also brings you closer to others – and losing contact with people increases your risk of dementia by more than a quarter.
6 Walking is arthritis’ arch-enemy
Arthritis is the number one cause of disability in the UK and putting your feet up is the worst thing you can do. “Movement is fundamental,” according to David Vaux of UK charity Arthritis Action. “There’s a lot of evidence that pain from arthritis is always improved if we can move, and this is pretty universally experienced with either an injury or with an arthritic joint.”
Fifty-five-year-old Kathy Cox was told she’d be in a wheelchair in her 30s. But there’s been a plot twist says the 1000-miler: “My rheumatologist says I’m defying medicine. Some days it’s a tough gig, sure, but I persevere because I know walking is what keeps me going physically and mentally.”
7 Walking is your heart’s hero
Heart disease is the world’s biggest killer. “But walking is the best thing anyone could do to reduce your risk of ever having a heart problem, and to reduce the chance you’ll have complications or difficulties with it if you did,” says expert Professor Scarlett McNally.
A walk not only improves how well your heart pumps, but also lowers cholesterol and blood pressure – responsible for 50% of Ischaemic heart disease.
The American Heart Association recommends it should be a first-line prescription for those with moderately high cholesterol and blood pressure. No one puts it better than James Rudd, senior lecturer in cardiovascular medicine at the Cambridge University:
“If a drug company came up with a medicine as effective as walking, they would have a billion-dollar blockbuster on their hands.”
8 Walking makes you super resilient
It takes just 10 minutes exposure to sunlight for your body to synthesise enough Vitamin D to start strengthening your bones, and boost immunity to harms from Covid to cancer. Walking daily enhances the inner layer of collagen that makes your skin supple and resilient, and rejuvenates its mitochondria – your skin’s anti-ageing army. The immune system of a 1000-mile challenger really hums, slashing the number of days lost to illness in an average year. And walking as little as nine minutes daily between March and September has been shown to be enough to sustain sufficient vitamin D levels throughout the whole of the winter.
9 Walking helps you rest and restore
Poor sleep can lead to heart problems, stroke, cancer and a heightened chance of early death. Yes, walking can help you to sleep better, but here’s the thing – even when it doesn’t help you, it actually eliminates most of the links between bad sleep and premature death. A study of nearly 400,000 people by University College London and the University of Sydney found that the equivalent of 150 minutes of brisk walking each week was enough to almost completely neutralise the dangerous effects of poor sleep. Problems sleeping? Walk more, sleep better – and stop worrying about it at all.
10 Walking helps reverse aging
Exercise wears your cartilage and muscle fibres, but it also prompts your body to build it all back stronger than before. It’s this repair process, according to researchers at Harvard University, which lowers the risk of cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and depression – all while releasing anti-inflammatories and antioxidants, and increasing blood flow.
Neuroscientist Shane O’Mara from Trinity College in Dublin says if you want your mind to function like someone years younger, you just need to get walking. He says studies show that people in their late 60s and early 70s who have been walking produce twice as many ideas as young adults who have been seated. “Walking can reverse the ageing of our brain. You get old when you stop walking; you don’t stop walking when you get old.”
