When Walking is Bad for You

Walking is one of the most rewarding forms of exercise, physically, mentally and spiritually. You can walk and pray, you can walk and socialize with a walking buddy. You can strengthen the body, heart and mind. It’s inexpensive and handy—just lace up those walking shoes, step outside and hit the road.

So, with all of these phenomenal benefits, why would I say that there might be a reason for when you shouldn’t walk?

Today I’m going to cover one big one.

You need to rethink walking for exercise if you are an urban dweller.

 

A 2016 University of Cambridge study published in Preventive Magazine indicated that the benefits of walking in polluted city air far outweighed the negatives. But they used a computerized health model, not real people for their research.

Now a new study published in The Lancet, one of the world’s oldest and best-known, peer-reviewed medical journals, suggests that where you choose to walk does matter.

 

What happens when you walk those city streets—

Researchers found that walking along heavily polluted streets does cancel out many of walking’s benefits.

The researchers gathered 119 people, all over the age of 60. Of this group, 40 of them were considered healthy, 40 had diagnosed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is a chronic inflammatory lung disease, and 39 had ischemic heart disease, a condition caused by artery narrowing that reduces blood flow and oxygenation to the tissues.

Then the researchers gave them their walking assignments. Some were instructed to walk two hours a day along London’s Oxford Street, a downtown road heavily traversed by buses and cars. The other group spent two hours strolling through a quiet part of London’s Hyde Park.

After each workout, the researchers measured the pollution concentration in each location and then measured the following health markers in the participants:

  • lung capacity
  • breathlessness
  • wheezing
  • coughing
  • arterial stiffness (related to high blood pressure).

 

What do you think the researchers discovered?

If you think that walking in Hyde Park allowed the walkers to experience better health, you’d be partially right. Actually, they experienced big improvements in lung capacity and arterial stiffness.

After the participants walked along Oxford Street, inhaling its air pollutants, they experienced modest improvements in their lung capacity, but they experienced a worsening of arterial stiffness. Those findings led the researchers to suggest that the poor air quality negated many of walking’s benefits.

 

What about the COPD walkers? While they did experience some lung capacity improvements during their walks in both locations, the researchers considered the improvement to be negligible.

But the walkers with COPD demonstrated more respiratory issues, like coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath, after walking Oxford Street. They also ended up with more arterial stiffness.

The walkers with heart disease also suffered in the polluted urban environment. Unless they were taking cardiovascular drugs, which appeared to offer some protection against the bad air, they suffered more severe arterial stiffness.

Kian Fan Chung, lead researcher and professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London’s National Heart and Lung Institute, said, “You should avoid polluted areas for doing any form of exercise, specifically walking.” He added that if an outdoor, less-polluted green space is not available, then you should probably exercise indoors.

And I think even suburban dwellers need to think carefully about when and where they walk around their neighborhoods.

 

 

Case Study—

Within the last thirteen months, I’ve suffered and recovered from a decent bout of pneumonia and been diagnosed with lung nodules. Not large enough yet to be considered cancerous, but still there, and disconcerting. My once clean lungs have caused me to rethink, re-plan, and re-execute my neighborhood-walking program.

After trying both late afternoon and morning walking programs, I’ve discovered the times people are usually leaving for work, which means I get to inhale a lot of carbon monoxide fumes and burned gasoline byproducts if I walk when they drive. I usually end up feeling worse when I arrive home. And I cough a lot.

So when the weather was cooler, I’d wait until after 9:00 AM to walk, or walk around 3:00, before the coming-home rush. That worked well for several months.

But now it’s HOT, and I can’t handle walking in the blazing inferno here in Tucson. (I’m a beach babe by design, not a desert rat.) So I needed to alter my walking times again.

On the weekend, the engineer and I roll out of bed at 4:30 AM, get dressed and drive to a local mountain to walk while the sun’s rising and for about an hour after it starts warming up the desert floor. At a 2.25 mph pace (this mountain’s grade is STEEP!), we can do the 2.9 miles up and back in about an hour and twenty minutes. But now we’re walking up, back, up halfway and then back down to increase our mileage and stamina for our hike over the Pyrenees for our Camino pilgrimage.

On weekdays, we’ve switched to strapping on our headlamps and walking at night around our neighborhood. We’ve discovered that garden spiders are nocturnal and have the most glorious, prism-like eyeballs that reflect our light beams! Sometimes we even catch cottontail bunnies or a pack rat enjoying the cooler night air. And we can also see the airborne dust particles floating across the light beams. We’re stunned at how much dust floats around us that we never see! But it’s a truly lovely time of day to walk.

But when it’s windy here and the dust is really flying, I head to the gym to walk on a treadmill. I’m allergic to dust (really), and it’s one of the environmental issues that will clog up my respiratory track and flatten me within hours. This year, thank the Lord, is the first time in three or four springs that I have NOT succumbed to dust-triggered bronchitis or pneumonia!

I think my new training plan is reaping benefits!

 

 

How about you?

Where and when do you usually walk (run or bike), and is it a potential health hazard for you?

Would it be possible for you to drive to a green belt location or park to walk instead of walking vehicle-clogged city streets?

Start monitoring your breathing after walking in different environments, and maybe measuring your blood pressure.

 

NEXT WEEK: More on walking, and finding green space to enjoy it!

Until then,

Happy walking, wherever it may be!

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

Photos courtesy of Google Images

Why Knowing Your Resting and Exercise Heart Rate is Critical to Good Health

What do you know about your resting and exercise heart rate? What should you know? Were you able to get an idea of what your normal resting heart rate is when you established some baselines for your vitals a couple of weeks ago? (See April 4th’s post: Welcome to Workout Wednesdays! http://andreaarthurowan.com/2018/04/04/welcome-to-workout-wednesdays/admin/ )

Before we get too far down the road with a discussion about heart rate, let’s start with the basics, so we can continue laying those important health and fitness tip brick foundations!

 

Heart Rate basics—

While you probably know what your resting heart rate measures—how many times your heart beats in a minute—do you know what that number actually tells you about your heart and your health?

Simply put, resting heart rate tells you just how hard your heart is working while at rest to supply your body’s oxygen needs. Just how many times does it have to contract in a minute to squirt blood through the pipes to get your body oxygenated for plain old activities of daily living, or sleeping, or sitting in a chair watching television?

 

Two more things your resting heart rate can tell you—

  • Reveal your risk for heart attack, and
  • Reveal your aerobic capacity—the amount of oxygen your body is able to consume, or the heart’s ability to pump oxygenated blood to your muscles.

 

As your oxygen supply needs change throughout the day, your heart will speed up or slow down to accommodate those needs. Or at least it should. What is “normal” for you, though, will depend upon your age, gender, and fitness level.

According to a Harvard Women’s Health Watch on-line article titled “What Your Heart Rate is Telling You,” says a 2010 Women’s Health Initiative study report indicated that a lower heart rate in post-menopausal women might protect against heart attacks. Those having a resting heart rate of 76 beats per minute (bpm) or greater were 26% more likely to have a heart attack or die than those having a resting heart rate of 62 bpm or lower.

They recommended having a chat with your doctor if your resting heart rate hovers consistently above 80 bpm. (For further reading, see the link at the bottom of this post.)

It’s also a good idea to take your resting heart occasionally (don’t just rely on a one-time measurement) so you can determine how, and if it’s changing. If you see a sudden change from what’s “normal” for you, it’s a good idea to discuss this with your physician. It may be a symptom or indicator of something going on with your heart or vascular health.

 

What you need to know about maximum heart rate in exercise—

Your heart rate usually rises during intense workouts, prolonged long-distance (aerobic) exercise workouts, stress and illness. Your heart’s maximum heart rate is the rate at which your heart is working at its hardest to supply oxygen to your body. In exercise, this is the rate that can only be sustained for several minutes.

Your maximum heart rate is a function of that aerobic capacity we already mentioned. When an exercise physiologist measures it, she’ll write in terms of VO2 max and actually measure the volume of oxygen you move through your lungs during exercise. To get an exact measurement, it’s a complicated, messy process of actually breathing into a tube during exercise, collecting your breath in a bag and then analyzing that volume through a special machine. The more conditioned you are, the higher your VO2 max usually is.

 

How do you calculate your maximum exercise heart rate?

Ever go to the gym, hop on a treadmill or stationary bike and see the maximum heart rate formula and exercise intensity graph to indicate where you should be exercising for your age?

The basic formula is: 220 – your age x 50 – 70%

Start with the number 220 and then subtract your age from that. If you’re 40 years old, it will be 180 bpm. So what does that tell you? It tells you that 180 bpm is the highest heart rate number you should obtain while exercising at your maximum level. But you’ve already seen that the maximum level can only be, and should only be, sustained for no more than several minutes.

So, unless you’re planning to exercise for just two to three minutes, how do you decide what heart rate you should be exercising at?

Well, it really depends upon what you’re trying to achieve. We’ll delve into those specifics in a future post, but, in general, you could aim for 50- 70 or 80% of 180. So the formula would look like:

 

Max HR formula: 220 minus your age multiplied by .50, .60, .70, or .80

 

If you’re aiming for middle-of-the-road, new exerciser level, that number would come in around 90 bpm. Doesn’t sound very high, does it? But it can be a sound level to aim for if you’re an exercise newbie, or just getting back into the swing of things following an illness.

HOWEVER, that formula is NOT the most accurate or desirable formula if:

—You are in good physical condition.

—You have a low resting heart rate.

 

So what is the most desirable formula? We’ll explore that in next week’s post, when I’ll give you that critical formula to help you better judge and develop your personal exercise intensity. *

 

 

One more (GREAT) reason to strive for a lower heart rate—   

 

 

If lowering your risk of having or dying of a heart attack isn’t enough, maybe this other finding noted in Harvard’s article might give you a nudge to lower your heart rate.

 

“… a small controlled trial demonstrated that men and women with mild cognitive impairment who raised their aerobic capacity also improved their performance on tests of memory and reasoning.”

 

In later posts, you’ll learn more about how physical exercise doesn’t just help the body but improves brain function! And who doesn’t want to have a better, sharper brain?

 

 Trivia Question?

Which athletes are notorious for boasting the highest VO2 maximum measurements? (You’ll learn the answer next Wednesday!)

 

Until next time,

Blessings for prosperity in all things—emotional, physical and spiritual!

Andrea

 

*You should always check with your doctor about what your target heart rate should be if you’re taking medication for a heart condition.

Link: Harvard Health article “What Your Heart Rate is Telling You https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/what-your-heart-rate-is-telling-you

Photos courtesy of Google Images