The American Heart Association journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology published a report stating brisk walking can be as useful as running for lowering the risk of heart-related diseases, according to a report in Science Daily.
Researchers found that brisk walking can be as beneficial as running in terms of reducing the risk of developing heart-related diseases including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and possibly coronary heart disease. Researchers examined data of 33,060 participants in the National Runners' Health Study and 15,045 walkers in the National Walkers' Health Study. Researchers found that the same energy used in both walking and running lowered the risk of heart-related diseases at the same rate.
"Walking and running provide an ideal test of the health benefits of moderate-intensity walking and vigorous-intensity running because they involve the same muscle groups and the same activities performed at different intensities," said Paul T. Williams, Ph.D., the study's principal author and staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Life Science Division in Berkeley, California, reports Science Daily.
For the study, researchers measured the distance walkers and runners covered and all the participants were asked to answer questionnaires at the end of the activity. Previous studies have examined the data based on time, which may give different information on the amount of energy used in running and walking.
Since the study used distance as the deciding factor, both groups covered the same amount of distance and expended similar energy. As a result, both runners and walkers had similar health benefits.
Researchers noted that the walkers had significantly lower risk of developing diseases like hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes and coronary heart disease, than runners.
Runners reduced the risk of developing first-time hypertension by 4.2 percent while brisk walkers reduced it by 7.2 percent. Similarly, first time high cholesterol risk was lowered by 4.3 percent by running and 7 percent by walking.
Furthermore, risk of developing first-time diabetes was lowered by 12.1 percent among runners and 12.3 percent among brisk walkers and coronary heart risk was lowered by 4.5 percent by running and 9.3 percent by walking.
"People are always looking for an excuse not to exercise, but now they have a straightforward choice to run or to walk and invest in their future health," Williams said.
The study was funded by "The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute."
