The benefits of walking were recognized as far back as 460 BC, when the father of medicine, Hippocrates, said that “walking is man’s best medicine.” There are still benefits today of an improved lifestyle as a result of walking. Read on to see small changes you can make in your life to increase the amount you walk and reap the benefits.
A History of the Benefits of Walking
We’re going way back to the father of medicine – Hippocrates. We know him best because his name is on the oath doctors take today, the Hippocratic oath. He was born in Greece in 460 BC, so of course, all of what he thought was going on with the human body wasn’t quite right. I mean, we’ve got a lot of medical advice being given today that’s not quite right, and we could walk for miles while we talked about THAT subject! I’ll reign myself in, though, and get back to Hippocrates.
Several things he did get right, and among them, was his appreciation of the act of walking. He said, Walking is Man’s Best Medicine. And by man, I’m SURE he meant human’s best medicine. As far back as the BC era, there was appreciation for walking as medicine! I think that’s pretty impressive! I’m sure there’ve been those advocates all along, but somewhere along the way, many of us got the sense that doing moderate movement was worthless, and that if we weren’t going to – fill in the blank here: run a marathon, do a tough mudder or a Spartan race, or participate in the CrossFit games or whatever extreme form of exercise you’ve heard of – if we weren’t going to do those, we might as well just sit tight. Literally. Sit on the couch, order from the drive-through, shop online instead of in person. Because those feelings can keep us very still. And stillness results in the antithesis of that long list of benefits l mentioned earlier. And staying still also contributes to our feeling bad emotionally, and in terms of mood. The all or nothing way of thinking has hurt us as a modern culture, but luckily, breaking out of it almost immediately does good!
There are some simple choices, such as going in to grab coffee versus ordering from the drive-through or walking into a store and moving around to try on clothes versus ordering clothes online, that add up to make a big difference. This shows us the kind of movement that matters. We’ve probably all heard we should park far from the store, or take the stairs instead of the escalator and these are all true. But there are so many other ways we can add some steps in, and other movements, and they all do add up. By emptying the dishwasher, even, instead of leaving it for my kind husband, I’m doing myself a favor, as well as doing him one! Looking for opportunities to move is a whole different mindset, one that really helps to combat the fact that we barely have to move to accomplish anything in this day and age, because of all the conveniences we have.
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