Short walk once-a-week can lower risk of death: study

In other news, the sky is blue, water is wet...

I'm no health nut but what kind of person (barring physical problems) doesn't get out and walk around for 10 minutes a week? Talk about a low bar, sheesh.

For those of us who ARE couch potatoes, may I offer an observation? The thought of walking without an aim is pain to the mind, to be put off if at all possible.

So... what can make a walk pleasurable? I have a series of walks in this area, each with an aim. (Always take the camera since encounters with any form of wildlife are fun opportunities as the seasons change. Send your photos to relatives or do Instagram.)

The shortest default walk is about 500 yards to the convenience store for a 100 yen cup of black coffee. Check the phone, read a book, make some prints, then walk back again. Just under a kilometer and about 15 minutes altogether.

The next is triangular, about 1,000 yards to the post office, 1,000 yards to the convenience store for a black coffee, and back. Others take in a pond or a river or a hill.

One walk involves the 250 steps up to the temple to pray and see the views, but this is for special occasions such as New Year's Day. And there are 54 steps down to the front gate just to check the mail.

At home I have a personal rule to use only the upstairs bathroom. Once upstairs I often do an upper body routine with some small hand weights.

So when I die, they can use my body for research.

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Ten minutes a week? I don't believe it. There'll be a lot of couch potatoes using this survey as an escuse not to do anything really useful for their health. And self-reported results are always problematical.

That will only be if they haven’t bothered to read the article properly. Which they probably didn’t being lazy by nature.

Bypassing the ten minutes part of the discussion, there do seem to be a lot of health benefits to be accrued from walking, including improved and more comfortable digestion. From personal experience, I would say that walking at least half an hour, and preferably at least one hour, is far better than a ten-minute walk.

walking and running studies are fun, because whatever the upper limit is, that's the healthiest one. They have to have some kind of limit but whenever they keep raising it and it has the best outcome. Just keep moving

there do seem to be a lot of health benefits to be accrued from walking, including improved and more comfortable digestion.

Agree completely. For me a night stroll also helps with sleep, soothes any stresses and helps me keep watch over my vassals.