Faster is not always better: To combat diabetes, walking at a speed of 6.4 kilometers per hour is ideal

No one knows how fast you should walk to avoid getting sick. But the faster you walk, the lower your risk of diabetes. This picture emerges when comparing studies on the relationship between walking speed and type 2 diabetes.

It is known that exercise is beneficial for preventing chronic diseases. More than one million people in the Netherlands suffer from type 2 diabetes, and lack of exercise is an important risk factor. But the eternal question is: how often and how intensely do you exercise? For this week’s article in British Journal of Sports Medicine Back, researchers compared ten cohort studies. The researchers concluded that a speed of at least 6.4 kilometers per hour reduces the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 39 percent compared to walking. They call it that Brisk walking/brisk walking, which in Dutch can be called steady progress. Each additional kilometer per hour reduces the risk by another 9 percent.

Part of the explanation lies in circular reasoning: healthy people can walk faster. All sorts of other things associated with type 2 diabetes seem better too: heart and lung condition, muscle strength and weight, for example. The question remains: Are these people healthy because they walk briskly, or can they walk briskly because they are healthy?

And Dutch Animated advice It’s simple: exercise is good, more exercise is better. 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week is the minimum. Walking five kilometers per hour is fast enough for moderate/intense exercise. Not even half the Dutch people achieve this. Although evidence is mounting that more exercise is better, the greatest benefit is between no exercise and less exercise.

For those who find walking simply boring: British research Show this with the ineffective walk from Monty Python Silly ministry walks Health benefits can also be achieved compared to regular walking. It’s not the mileage per hour, but the extra energy required to run teabag style that provides the advantage.

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