Walking Helps the Heart
Friday, February 15, 2019
I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. 3 John 4, NIV.
A dozen years ago many considered jogging and vigorous exercise the best way to maintain cardiovascular health. But not anymore. Walking is the better choice to get the heart rate up enough to keep it healthy, but not so high that it gets stressed. Research has now confirmed what Ellen G. White wrote in 1872: "There is no exercise that can take the place of walking" (Testimonies, vol. 3, p. 78).
Walking helps the vagus nerve slow the heart rate, which is one of the goals of modern cardiology, and it does so without drugs. Formerly the goal of exercise was to race the heart, but for many it overworked the organ. About 25,000 extra deaths occur each year in the U.S. alone because people exercise too briskly.
The December 1993 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reported a study done on 2,000 people in Boston and Augsburg, Germany. When they exercised to the point of panting, as when jogging, playing raquetball or tennis, or pushing cars out of snow, they had twice the risk of getting a heart attack within one hour—even among those who exercised five times a week.
Walking outdoors in nature can also lower the adrenaline in the blood, which means less stress. The less stress, the slower the heart will beat. Jogging and aerobics spill stress hormones into the blood, inflaming the platelets to initiate clotting and depriving the blood of a clot-dissolving enzyme called plasmin or fibrinolysin (fi-brin-o-LY-sin). Competition adds to the problem.
Walking improves the efficiency of the heart. It can increase your HDL (high-density lipoprotein), which works like little dump trucks that pick up last year's cholesterol from the coronary arteries and take it down to the liver, where a high-fiber vegetarian diet can sweep it out of your body forever.
No other exercise can do as much for you, with so little risk, as walking.
I have a feeling that if James had the evidence we now have about the benefits of walking when he wrote "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth," he would have meant walking spiritually in the truth, yes, but also walking physically in the truth demonstrated by scientific evidence.
Ask a friend to go walking with you today and tomorrow and the next day.
A dozen years ago many considered jogging and vigorous exercise the best way to maintain cardiovascular health. But not anymore. Walking is the better choice to get the heart rate up enough to keep it healthy, but not so high that it gets stressed. Research has now confirmed what Ellen G. White wrote in 1872: "There is no exercise that can take the place of walking" (Testimonies, vol. 3, p. 78).
Walking helps the vagus nerve slow the heart rate, which is one of the goals of modern cardiology, and it does so without drugs. Formerly the goal of exercise was to race the heart, but for many it overworked the organ. About 25,000 extra deaths occur each year in the U.S. alone because people exercise too briskly.
The December 1993 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reported a study done on 2,000 people in Boston and Augsburg, Germany. When they exercised to the point of panting, as when jogging, playing raquetball or tennis, or pushing cars out of snow, they had twice the risk of getting a heart attack within one hour—even among those who exercised five times a week.
Walking outdoors in nature can also lower the adrenaline in the blood, which means less stress. The less stress, the slower the heart will beat. Jogging and aerobics spill stress hormones into the blood, inflaming the platelets to initiate clotting and depriving the blood of a clot-dissolving enzyme called plasmin or fibrinolysin (fi-brin-o-LY-sin). Competition adds to the problem.
Walking improves the efficiency of the heart. It can increase your HDL (high-density lipoprotein), which works like little dump trucks that pick up last year's cholesterol from the coronary arteries and take it down to the liver, where a high-fiber vegetarian diet can sweep it out of your body forever.
No other exercise can do as much for you, with so little risk, as walking.
I have a feeling that if James had the evidence we now have about the benefits of walking when he wrote "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth," he would have meant walking spiritually in the truth, yes, but also walking physically in the truth demonstrated by scientific evidence.
Ask a friend to go walking with you today and tomorrow and the next day.
Used by permission of Health Ministries, North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists.
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