My husband often comments that I’m fast – a fast walker, that is. He says that I walk faster than most people, including himself. As far as I can remember, I’ve always been this way. I just love walking!

Being a fast mover seems to be a good thing, according to studies measuring the correlation between walking speed and life expectancy. In a presentation in July at the IAGG World Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics held in Paris, researchers reported that slower walkers have shorter life- spans than faster walkers. Their findings were based on nine previous studies that included 34,000 men and women whose average age was almost 74. The participants were tracked from 10 years to 20 years.

Walkers who moved at a gait speed of 1.4m per second or faster were more than twice as likely to be alive after 10 years than people who walked at 0.4m per second or slower. After 15 years, the survival gap between faster and slower walkers widened even more.

Why should gait speed make a difference to a person’s longevity? Researchers note that walking is influenced by many vital body parts, so fast walking seems to indicate that a body is functioning well, and therefore is likely to live longer. This holds true regardless of gender, ethnicity and even health condition.

These findings concur with other studies like the one conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh two years earlier, which tracked almost 500 people aged 65 years or older. After nine years, 77 per cent of the slower walkers had died, compared to only 27 per cent of the fastest walkers.

Researchers from Paris-based medical research institute Inserm carried out a five-year study, beginning from 1999, involving more than 3,200 relatively fit men and women, aged 65 to 85, living in three French cities. The results showed that older people who are slow walkers are almost three times more likely to die of heart disease and related causes that older people who walk faster. This study found that the death rate among the slowest-walking one-third of participants – men whose gait speed was about 5.8 kmh or slower and women who walked at about 4.8 kmh or slower – was 44 per cent higher than among the two-thirds of participants who were faster walkers.

Dr. Alexis Elbaz, director of research at Inserm, has this message for the general population: “…maintaining fitness at older age may have important consequences and help preserve life and (muscle) function.”

Walking is a great way to exercise various body parts and keep yourself healthy. Best of all, you can do it anywhere, anytime and it’s free. No gym membership or costly equipment required. So come on, let’s get those feet moving!

Posted: December 11th, 2009 under Exercise & Fitness, Health Basics 101.
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Okinawa in Japan has the largest population of centenarians – people aged 100 years and older – in the world. The good health and longevity of the people has been attributed largely to their diet. Cancer and other serious diseases is rare in their society. The traditional Okinawan diet includes at least seven servings of dark green leafy vegetables daily, lots of fish, seaweed and soya products. Sounds like the typical Japanese diet? Not quite.

Traditional Okinawan dishes

Foods considered taboo by some health nuts are featured in Okinawan cuisine. Besides vegetables, seaweed, fish and soya foods, Okinawans eat – surprise, surprise – plenty of pork. They also like to use sugar – unrefined brown sugar that is – in their cooking and as a sweet. Sugar! This will gladden the hearts and palates of anyone with a sweet tooth.

The tofu eaten by the Okinawans is different from the soft, silken variety favored in the rest of Japan. Soft tofu has a very high water content, whereas tofu in Okinawa is densely packed. Thus, the soya content is much higher.

The traditional Okinawan diet is rich in minerals, fiber and unrefined foods. In addition, the traditional Okinawan lifestyle is slow, peaceful and rustic, requiring even the elderly to work hard to grow what they need for the dinner table. Read “regular exercise” here.

I like vegetables but I know I’m not consuming at least seven servings a day. I really should increase my intake of soya products and seaweed and cut down on refined foods. I do eat fish several times a week and I also take fish oils daily, so I’m getting my essential fatty acids. I already eat more fruits and vegetables than most people, and brown rice, wholemeal bread, whole grain cereals, nuts and dried fruit are staples, but there’s still room for increasing my fiber intake. Taking Neways’ “Maximol Solutions” daily will ensure that I’m getting enough minerals, as well as multivitamins.

As for exercise, I enjoy going for walks daily, sometimes even doing this two or three times a day. Besides being good for my health, it helps me de-stress. Are you getting enough exercise?

Posted: October 4th, 2009 under Cancer, Diet, Exercise & Fitness, Health Basics 101.
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One of the top marathoners in my city has leukaemia. That came as a great shock to many because this guy has been competing in marathons around the world for years, even in the Arctic and Antarctica, and he seems super fit. Few can match his stamina and endurance levels. What went wrong?

No one can say for sure in this particular case but Dr. Ben Tan, sports physician and head of Singapore’s Changi Sports Medicine Centre, warns against overdoing exercise. Regular exercise has been proven to boost the production and circulation of immune cells, the frontline soldiers against bacteria and viruses. However, going overboard will drag your immune system down.

“Excessive exercise stresses the body and taxes the immune system” says Dr. Tan. “Cortisol – a stress hormone that is released following prolonged, high-intensity exercise – suppresses the immune system.” In addition, the immune system will be made to channel its resources to repairing tissue damaged from excessive exercise, at the expense of its defence function.

The key to building up your immunity lies in REGULAR and not sporadic exercise. This is because the benefits which the immune system gains are not lasting. “The immune system is enhanced immediately after exercise, but returns to its baseline within a few hours,” he says. Regular exercise, therefore, prolongs the positive benefits.

Weekend warriors, take note! If exercising daily seems difficult to fit into your schedule, try doing something achievable, like a 20-minute walk after lunch or dinner. Take the stairs whenever possible. Park the car a little further away so you’ll have to walk a bit more. Make these little changes a daily habit, and you’ll boost your immune system and see an improvement in your health overall.

Posted: July 17th, 2009 under Exercise & Fitness, Health Basics 101, Immune System Health.
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