Doctor’s orders: listen up, this is important. Walk 1000 miles and you take giant strides towards health, sanity – and something even greater, urges Dr Peter Davies.
Dr Peter Davies: ‘We’re now, not least through Walk 1000 Miles, rediscovering the power of Hygeia’
The French philosopher and scientist René Descartes once remarked: “Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods I had accepted as true in my childhood, and realised it was necessary to demolish everything completely and start right again from the foundations.” I think it’s time we did the same.
What foundational beliefs have you built your life on? Are they the right ones for you? Do they let you build your health, wealth, relationships well? Do they enable you to flourish in your life and work? Do they bring you eudaemonia (deep purposeful contentment) and equanimity (mindful calmness)?
If they don’t what new beliefs and behaviours do you need to install?
I know I had some pretty toxic beliefs instilled into me. My dad thought health was something you built up a bank of when you were younger, and then hoped it would last you through the years into your old age.
In medical school health was never really discussed, except as the state of being ‘not ill’. We learned medicine’s job was to restore health – whatever that was – by simply getting the diseases out of patients. It’s a deeply pathogenic view of health. Disempowering, passive, reactive, and it’s led to the absurd but pervasive idea that to live is to simply negotiate an endless series of medical episodes – with the help of doctors who share what amounts to the idea life is a 100% fatal sexually transmitted illness.
That we squander our health in pursuit of wealth, then squander our wealth attempting to buy back our health is madness. If you wonder why the NHS is in difficulties, the lack of a positive view of functional health is at its root. There’s something deeply flawed about how medicine considers health and I’ve felt this flaw throughout my practice of medicine.
A healthier view
The Greeks recognised two main routes to health which they personified via two gods. Panacea was the god of treatment (which is of course necessary at times); Hygeia of living life in such a way that health is actively built up over time. It has an individual component – what we can do for ourselves – and a collective one – how we can do this well with, and for, one another. There’s a great word for this – salutogenesis – the positive processes that build up health in individuals and in societies.
We’re now, not least through Walk 1000 Miles, rediscovering the power of Hygeia. We’re realising how much health can be deliberately built up by activity throughout our lives, and how much stronger we can become both physically and mentally over time. Make no mistake: in achieving this walking is a superpower that helps us all to live better and longer, with more health within us and less illness in and around us.
A virtuous circle
One of the biggest falsehoods we’ve swallowed comes from taking Descartes’ famous statement ‘Cogito ergo sum’ (I think therefore I am) beyond its context. We’ve ended up splitting physical from mental health rather than seeing how both sides of our life experience are actually one thing. A coin isn’t heads or tails – it’s a whole coin with a different impression on both sides. Many of us grew up with the view children were either being brainy or brawny – further postponing the union of the two concepts. But in fact to be physically strong improves your mental health, and good mental health improves your physical health. If you’re physically healthy you think more quickly and more accurately, you feel better in and about yourself and you are calmer. If you’re mentally healthy your physical processes all work better. There’s a virtuous open spiral to walk out into here and throughout our lives.
It’s embodied within each of our cells. Exercise releases nervous and hormonal signals which make us heal, recover, grow and feel better. These messages reduce stress signals and promote cell and tissue growth and repair. As we’re going for a walk we’re challenging our bodies, but also giving them a treat, and our long term self a better future.
Corroboration from the many individuals who do Walk 1000 Miles each year is endless – thousands reporting better health, greater fitness and strength, feeling calmer, being more settled, weight lost, diabetes better controlled or even resolved completely, energy levels increasing. Whatever their reasons for taking up the challenge the positive results become clear; the joy of the process at least as great as the joy of any specific goal achieved. The challenge creates a venue of acceptance, encouragement and growth – the 1000-mile headline almost the least amazing thing.
The formal evidence is growing in the medical literature. There’s evidence linking walking with reduced development of dementia, depression, obesity and type 2 diabetes; lower incidence of ischaemic heart disease (heart attacks, angina), reduced risk of stroke, and risk of all-causes death. Extraordinary efficacy – if the reductions achieved were captured in a drug the inventor would win the Nobel Prize.
But it isn’t just about avoiding illness. Health is so much more than the absence of illness or a fear-fuelled avoidance of disease. It’s about the ability to function and thrive in our lives and society. Physical fitness and capacity is the obvious aspect – the ability to walk well, to go far, to carry the shopping home, and not fall over. Mental fitness is shown by being able to think quickly, keep your mood calm and matched to the situation you’re in. Its lack is shown by irritability, moodiness, moroseness and eventually depression. Over time mental fitness is shown by improved memory, and walking regularly improves your concentration, your encoding of memories and keeps you away from anxiety, distraction, forgetfulness and ultimately dependency.
Brighter horizons
Relational fitness is about how we build our three key relationships. The first is with ourselves – how we relate to our inner horizon, self-image, self-esteem and confidence. The second is our external horizon of people around us – how we understand, enjoy, work and play with the people we encounter. The third is to the external horizon of the world – both the living (plants, animals, fungi) and the physical objects we encounter (rocks, rivers, valleys, trails, mountains). All of these relationships, and our capacity for such connections, are developed by walking. Wherever you walk you’re always deepening at least one of these relationships, while becoming calmer and healthier.
We come to realise our body is our tool for experiencing the world, our brain not separable from any it. We have sensations and impressions long before we do any thinking about our experiences. As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio describes: “We are not thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think”. I’d add that we need to move through the world in order to feel anything. Before we reach cogito ergo sum we need to enact ambulo ergo cogito. We walk so we can think.
In 2024 let’s walk out beyond the falsehoods and self-fulfilling prophesies and into what we naturally are, and so into what we can become. Let’s walk out into better physical, mental and relational health and away from the chronic diseases that lie in wait for the sedentary.
We’re animals evolved to walk somewhere between 2 and 20 miles a day as part of our lives. In fact it’s quite abnormal for humans not to walk – but the modern world is quite happy to make us behave in abnormal ways, so long as we consume. Recognising and actively counteracting this is one of the most important things we’ll ever do. So let’s accept and celebrate walking’s role in finding the way from merely existing to fully living. It’s a superpower – one that’s activated with a single step, and leads unerringly away from illness and to the you you’re meant to be.
