How walking benefits us.
- The relationship between walking and health.
- How walking can affect the long term quality of life.
- The inclusion of moderately paced walking has an influence reducing risk of chronic disease.
- Moderate intensity walking can have a strong effect on risk of disease like obesity, heart disease, diabetes and it can also even increase total life span.
- The definition of “moderate intensity “of walking can vary person to person, there are other activities performed that may be performed daily like strength training which could provide the same benefits that walking claims to have. So is walking uniquely effective or just another exercise that provides this?
- Engaging in higher intensity walking 20 minutes, (every other day) may yield greater benefits than the traditional recommendation of daily walking. Opposing the conventional belief of high frequency is superior to higher intensity workloads for long term health benefits like reducing obesity, risk of heart disease and diabetes..
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
There are bound to be intriguing results from any study of the health effects of different types of ambulating, ChefRat, but I’m not convinced you’ve identified the best of them yet. Keep looking at the original research on these questions—not the “conclusions” published in the popular press.
It’s too easy for Men’s Health magazine to say: “research shows there’s a better overall health benefit” to intensive walking three times a week than to daily casual walking without being at all specific about what “better health” means.
For example, there may be a psychological benefit to getting out daily to clear one’s head and reduce stress. That would qualify as a “health benefit” depending on who’s describing health.
One possibility occurs to me. I’ve often maintained that it doesn’t matter how fast a runner/walker covers the ground. For the purpose of burning calories, the prolonged mild activity of walking 10 miles in two hours should be the same as the benefit of running two miles in 15 minutes. It requires the same amount of work to do both. The load is the same, and it’s carried over the same distance. But different “types” of benefits could be gained, right? The heart, for example, might work harder over a shorter term for the runner. Is that exercise the equivalent of the mild increase over a longer period? And how about the leg muscles? Do they do the same work, or is there a difference between how FAST they carry that load the same distance?
Let me know what you think about how to make your research more worthwhile.