Walking your way to Good Health

Is it healthy to walk faster or longer?

WALK FASTER VS WALK LONGER

Walk faster:Walking has proven to be an excellent way to stay fit and healthy, and several studies have shown how walking can improve mental and physical health, making it one of the most popular forms of aerobic exercise a person does. However, the pace at which everyone walks is not always the same. This raises a question. Does speed matter? And the answer is “yes.” The faster the pace, the better the benefits of walking, according to a report by time now news.
What is brisk walking?
Walking at a fast pace is known as brisk walking, and people practice it in different forms and combinations such as pure brisk walking, alternating between brisk walking and leisure walking, alternating between brisk walking and jogging, and during brisk walking it is important to have the correct technique. Here are some tips for effective brisk walking:
Make sure your body is relaxed.Your vision should be forward, head, and neck relaxed.Your arms should relax and swing while walking.Ensure that your body is in an upright position with your back straight.Use and exercise your toes and feet completely while walking.Benefits of brisk walking:Heart health: Brisk walking can help manage blood sugar and stress, reduce the risk of obesity or weight gain, and improve immunity. These benefits can help maintain a healthy and active heart and thus reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.Weight management: If you are working on a weight loss plan, making brisk walking a part of your regular schedule can help burn calories and fat faster and thus aid weight management.Promotes Mental Health: Several studies have shown the effects of brisk walking on mental health by improving mood by reducing stress and tension. Moreover, it can help improve memory and sleep thus ensuring that the body stays rested.Improves Musculoskeletal Health: The body needs healthy bones and muscles to ensure balance, coordination, and strength. Brisk walking can help promote and strengthen muscle and bone health by improving circulation and weight.May Help Longevity: A strong, capable body has the ability to stay healthy for a longer period of time. By improving physical and mental health, brisk walking can help with longevity.walk longer:Research has proven that walking daily for 30-60 minutes is one of the best exercises we do. Some may underestimate its benefits because it is just a walking exercise, but walking long distances regularly gives the body countless benefits, and is especially useful in dispelling stress and getting rid of anxiety and depression. Going out to nature and exploring its space, directing attention to the surrounding environment helps to release the mental tension accumulated throughout the day. What are the benefits of hiking?The benefits of prolonged walkingThe potential benefits of taking long walks regularly include:• Giving the body more energy• Promote blood circulation: Prolonged walking contributes to improving blood flow, and walking 15 minutes after dinner enhances blood circulation to different parts of the body.• Enhance heart efficiency: Walking may help prevent heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, and can also help promote healthy cholesterol levels.• Enhancing the brain's oxygen supply: Walking helps supply the brain with more oxygen, and therefore it may improve cognitive function, especially when any symptoms of dementia or a decline in mental abilities appear.• Helping to lose weight: The practice of walking after eating helps to burn calories that will lose weight, which helps in relieving pressure on the joints and increasing their strength, and thus alleviating the pain in the knees.• Improving sleep quality: Feeling stressed can often prevent you from falling asleep. As long walks reduce stress, it helps improve sleep. A study published in BMJ Open in 2016 indicated that walking can improve sleep quality. The study participants walked 10,000 steps per day for 4 weeks, improving indicators of sleep quality, increasing the number of hours, and reducing sleep latency (Sleep). latency), which is the length of time required to transition from wakefulness to sleep.• Promote joint health: People with arthritis are often advised to engage in low-intensity exercise, such as walking, to help improve health without exacerbating pain. A study published in the Annals of internal medicine indicated that walking can help relieve joint pain and ease exacerbation of arthritis-related symptoms in people with osteoarthritis of the knee.• Strengthening the body's stamina: This helps to increase the body's fitness.• Controlling the level of blood sugar: Walking helps remove glucose from the bloodstream, especially in diabetic patients who suffer from high blood sugar. It helps burn excess sugar, and this is very useful, because it prevents this excess from turning into fat or cholesterol, thus reducing the risk of obesity. A study published in the journal Diabetes care in 2016. It was conducted on a group of people with a sedentary lifestyle, who suffer from diabetes and overweight. Walking helped lower blood sugar and insulin levels.• Reducing stress: These are the best hiking benefits of all. We experience huge amounts of stress every day, both mentally and physically, and a long walk may be the best way to get rid of mental tension every day. Walking also boosts oxygen, but it doesn't require much effort. It is also useful in reducing cortisol levels, and supports the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps deep sleep and improves mood.

Source : Quora.com

WHO Declares “Gaming” as a Disorder

The World Health Organization, the public health division of the United Nations, has released its newest list of classified diseases--and "gaming disorder" is included. A draft of the WHO's International Classification of Diseases (ICD) describes this as being characterized by a "pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour" online or offline.

The description goes on to say that gaming disorders can include the following: "1) impaired control over gaming (e.g., onset, frequency, intensity, duration, termination, context); 2) increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities; and 3) continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences."

People suffering from the so-called "gaming disorder" run the risk of "significant impairment" to their personal, family, social, education, and occupational lives, according to the WHO. The description goes on to say that "gaming disorder" can be a continuous condition or it can be episodic or recurrent in nature. For it to be suggested that a person has "gaming disorder," they would display these behaviour patterns for a year or longer.

The WHO also has a listing for "hazardous gaming," which the organisation says "refers to a pattern of gaming, either online or offline that appreciably increases the risk of harmful physical or mental health consequences to the individual or to others around this individual."

It goes on to say: "The increased risk may be from the frequency of gaming, from the amount of time spent on these activities, from the neglect of other activities and priorities, from risky behaviours associated with gaming or its context, from the adverse consequences of gaming, or from the combination of these. The pattern of gaming is often persists in spite of awareness of increased risk of harm to the individual or to others."

Speaking to the BBC, technology addiction specialist Dr. Richard Graham said he welcomes the WHO's decision to making "gaming disorder" a recognised disease. "It is significant because it creates the opportunity for more specialised services. It puts it on the map as something to take seriously," he said. At the same time, he said he worries that it could also lead to "confused parents whose children are just enthusiastic gamers."

Not everyone is thrilled with the WHO's decision to recognise gaming addition as a medical condition. The Entertainment Software Association, which represents the video game industry's interests in Washington DC and organizes E3 every year, said the move "recklessly trivializes real mental health issues.”

"Just like avid sports fans and consumers of all forms of engaging entertainment, gamers are passionate and dedicated with their time," the ESA said in a statement to Gamasutra. "Having captivated gamers for more than four decades, more than 2 billion people around the world enjoy video games."

"The World Health Organization knows that common sense and objective research prove video games are not addictive. And, putting that official label on them recklessly trivializes real mental health issues like depression and social anxiety disorder, which deserve treatment and the full attention of the medical community. We strongly encourage the WHO to reverse direction on its proposed action."

The newest ICD draft is not yet finalized, so things could change regarding its content and language. We'll report back with more details as they become available.

Source: Gaming Disorder

Laughter Yoga

Brief History In the early 90’s an Indian medical Dr. Madan Kataria worked as a registrar in a local hospital in Mumbai, and also wrote papers for medical journals. In his scholarly work he became interested in the growing body of scientific evidence showing that laughter is extremely beneficial to mental and physical health. He decided that more laughter was needed to improve health and cope with the stress of modern living and started a quest to find ways that laughter could be prescribed to patients and people who needed it. In March 1995, while writing an article ‘Laughter – The Best Medicine’ for a health journal, he discovered many modern scientific studies, which described in depth, the many proven benefits of Laughter on the Human mind and body. In particular, Dr. Kataria was impressed by Norman Cousins’ book Anatomy of an Illness and the research work by Dr. Lee Berk. Profoundly inspired and being a man of action, Dr. Kataria immediately decided to field-test the impact of laughter on himself and others.

Starting with just five people, at 7 am on March 13, 1995, at a public park in his neighborhood in Mumbai, India; he launched the first ‘Laughter Club’. These five founding members laughed together in the park that day to the amusement of bystanders; and the small group quickly grew to more than 50 participants, within a few days. In the initial meetings, they stood in a circle with one person in the center, to tell a joke or a funny story. Everybody enjoyed and felt good for the rest of the day. However, after two weeks, the Laughter Club hit a snag. The stock of good jokes and stories ran out, and negative, hurtful and naughty jokes started to emerge. Two offended participants complained that it would be better to discontinue the Club than to continue with such jokes. Dr. Kataria asked the Club members to give him just one day to develop a ‘breakthrough’ that would resolve the crisis. That night, Dr. Kataria reviewed his research and finally found the answer he was looking for: Our body cannot differentiate between pretend and genuine laughter. Both produced the same ‘Happy Chemistry’. The next morning he explained this to the group, and asked them to try to act out laughter with him, for one minute. Amid skepticism they agreed to try…. The results were amazing. For some, the make believe laughter quickly turned into real laughter – this was contagious and in no time others followed. Soon the group was laughing like never before. The hearty laughter that followed persisted for almost ten minutes. This breakthrough was the birth of Laughter Yoga.

Realizing that there are ways other than humor to stimulate laughter, Dr. Kataria developed a range of laughter exercises including elements of role-play and other techniques from his days as an amateur theater actor. Giving a thought to the importance of childlike playfulness, he developed further techniques to stimulate this within the group. As Yoga practitioners, Dr. Kataria and his wife Madhuri, Co-Founder of Laughter Yoga, saw the similarities between Laughter and Pranayama exercises, and incorporated elements from this ancient form of Yoga into Laughter Yoga, including the deep breathing exercises now used between laughter exercises, to deepen the impact. See this Video: