Read the passage and answer the questions that follow:
You want to be healthy. You know you need to exercise more. But if you are not ready to grunt through an hour of kickboxing, don’t despair. There is a growing agreement among exercise. researchers that the intense physical activities offered by most health clubs are not the only or even the preferable-path to better health. Indeed, the best thing for most of us may be to just walk.
Yes, walk. At a reasonable vigorous clip (five to six kmph) for half an hour or so, maybe five or six times a week. You may not feel the benefits all at once, but the evidence suggests that over the long term, a regular walking routine can do a world of preventive good.
Walking, in fact, may be the perfect exercise. For starters, it’s one of the safest things you can do with your body. It’s much easier on the knees than running and doesn’t trigger untoward side effects. Dr (Miss) Johna Manson, chief of preventive medicine at a leading Harvard woman’s hospital says, “If everyone were to walk briskly 30 minutes a day, we could cut the incidence of many chronic diseases by 30 to 40 per cent.” She further says, “Regular physical activity is probably as close to a magic bullet as we will come in modern medicine.”
And for those of us who don’t have half-hour chunks of time, the news gets even better. Several recent studies suggest that walking briskly three or four times a day for 10 minutes at a time may provide many of the same benefits as walking continuously for 30 minutes.
Here’s how to make the most of your walking routine. First, get into gear. Walker’s shoes need to have enough room at the front for the feet to spread. Then, ease on down that road. Avoid muscle aches by starting slowly and incorporating gentle stretches into both your warm-up and cool down.
You must plot your course. Some people walk at a specific time each day. Others shoe horn walking into their routines by parking the car a few minutes from the store or taking the stairs instead of the lift. Record your efforts, including how long and how far you walked. Jotting down improvements keeps you motivated and challenges you to do better.
Since walking affects you in so many ways at once, it’s difficult to determine precisely why it’s good for you. But much of the evidence gathered so far is compelling.
Brisk walking is good for the heart – which makes a lot of sense. The heart is a muscle after all, and anything that makes the blood flow faster through a muscle helps keep it in shape. But regular walking also lowers blood pressure, which decreases the stress on the arteries. It can boost the amount of HDL cholesterol (the good one) in our blood. It even seems to make the blood less “sticky”, and therefore less likely to produce unwanted clots. This all adds up to as much as a 50 per cent reduction in the risk of suffering a heart attack.
Walking briskly for at least half an hour consumes a couple of hundred calories and boosts your metabolic rate for the rest of the day, giving you a better chance of winning the battle of the bulge. Walking is also a great way to lose body fat, even if you don’t lose any weight.
Walking not only strengthens the muscles but also builds up the bones. Millions of people suffer from osteoarthritis – the wear and tear kind of arthritis – of the knees. Walking reduces pain by strengthening the muscle around the joint.
Walking won’t cure everything that ails you, of course, and nothing happens overnight. “People who have never exercised regularly should not think that in a week they’ll solve their problems by walking,” says Dr J. David Curb, a professor of geriatric medicine.
1. What advice is offered to be healthy?
2. What precautions must be taken in undertaking a walking routine?
3. How is brisk walking useful for the heart?
4. What are the other spheres in which walking is useful?
5. What is a great way to lose body fat?
6. How is walking useful in osteoarthritis?
Find out a word from the passage which means:
7. A Substantial Amount.
8. Active.
9. Increase.
