07/09/2026
“Walking: a short and off-the-cuff dissertation about a mild exercise…” -by Egon
So this has been something that has been bothering me for some time… be it people I know casually or well… patients, friends, family, or otherwise, the public at large… but listen, people: ya ain’t movin’ enough. The vast majority of you. I don't move myself as often or intensely as I used to either, just for the sake of a little self disclosure and honesty.
Now as I've said to plenty of my clients and patients over the last couple of decades, when I say “you need to engage in some form of exercise to enjoy optimal health” I don't mean that you should start squatting a Ford F-150 truck, bench press a house, train for a cage fighting match, start a High Intensity Interval Training program that exhausts you in five minutes, run across the nation like Forrest Gump, or anything similarly ridiculous or unrealistic based on your current level (or lack thereof) of conditioning. What I am suggesting is getting in some movement at which your body is most efficient and seems to have been built for.
Walking. Just as I said from the outset.
First we'll look at it from a purely functional standpoint: as we age and generally become more and more sedentary… and, to be brutally honest here, LAZIER… we lose strength and aerobic capacity merely from neglect and misuse. The muscles in our legs and hips are the largest in our bodies because they are made to propel us through space and keep us upright, and yet they atrophy, become weaker less pliant and flexible, and less responsive to neurological demand with the aforementioned neglect. That means that balance becomes a critical issue in later decades, and therefore the probability of falling and getting injured increases dramatically. This means expensive hospital stays, lengthier recovering time, subsequent diminished strength & function (and thereby even greater chances of falling and injury), or worse. Remember in the old days when falling down and breaking a hip at age 50+ was virtually a death sentence? I strongly encourage you to make the effort to avoid that fate for as long as possible.
Walking in itself will not entirely prevent the gradual loss of muscle without additional workout intensity (more on that on a later rant), but it will keep the muscle you have functional. When you walk, you maintain or regain gluteal (butt muscle) tonicity, keeps a level of tonicity and flexibility of your hamstrings through the rhythmic cycle of putting one foot in front of the other and, promotes range of motion in the hips via the same mechanism. If you have a shuffling and/or stooped gait, you absolutely need more of this movement.
It also has a major impact on two other very important function in the human body: metabolism… the efficiency at which you process nutrients & fuel, and immune function.
Immunity is enhanced by keeping the blood and lymph fluids circulating. Both blood and lymph carry nutrients and wastes to and from every cell in your body. The less efficient and slower the circulation, the more that these fluids, which carry immune cells (leukocytes, lymphocytes, & phagocytes) will pool and stagnate, and pathogens (you know, “bugs”, bacteria, viruses, etc.) will proliferate and take over more rapidly. Blood circulates more freely than lymph, which is thicker in nature, but venous return to the heart from the legs is a problem unless you pump it upwards via muscular contraction (mostly by the calf muscles, often referred to as “the second heart”). In fact, lymph relies entirely on movement and muscular contraction to circulate, the heart does not pump it outward as it does the blood. Chronic inflammation, edema, and varicose veins are the commonly seen result.
In terms of metabolism, a major issue we all have to think about is the increasing tendency for our aging population is the onset of insulin resistance and diabetes. Muscle, and especially the larger muscles of the lower body, are “glucose sinks”, meaning they can be the burners and storage units of glucose that we get from our meals. Less muscle tissue, and less demand on those tissues, dramatically increases the incidence of those outcomes which are commonly referred to as “metabolic syndrome” (high blood sugar, high insulin levels, hypertension, obesity, etc.)
And as with any type of physical movement, your mood has a tendency to improve, your thinking clears, and your elimination (bowel clearing) improves, which are all markers of overall improvement in health.
Should you engage in some form of resistance training? Yoga? Pilates? Qigong? Martial arts? Stretching routines? Athletics? Absolutely, especially if you find something that you enjoy, which will help ensure that you keep it up.
But if you don’t care for anything like that, and you can walk: walk. Maybe you can only go a hundred yards at first... maybe more, maybe less… but you will have a point of reference with which to gradually work and improve on.
Walk. One of the great things about walking is you don’t need special equipment, special shoes (unless you have problems with your feet), a uniform, cheerleaders, fans, corporate sponsors, or anything like that… but I digress...
WALK!
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