The “Health Alert” had a very interesting article in the August 2015 issue concerning the importance of walking, especially in your senior years. Below are some excerpts:
“Medicine now agrees that low fitness is probably more important than all the other heart risk factors like high cholesterol and high blood pressure…..Of course you won’t hear about this from mainstream medicine – and most likely not even from your own doctor or cardiologist. “There is just no money in it. There are no statin drugs to sell. No blood pressure drugs. No drugs to force your heart to beat harder, easier, faster, or slower. There are no coronary artery bypasses, angioplasty, or angiography. There are no stress tests, nuclear tests, calcium score tests, or any other test. Just the free recommendation to get up and walk. “This recommendation should always be made – in every single case. In fact, the lead researcher on fitness and heart health said if he were the ‘grand poobah” of medical care, he would sue physicians for medical malpractice if they failed to prescribe physical activity – anywhere from 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day, for all their heart patients. I agree! “If you have any kind of heart problem and are inactive, it is easy to get active. Simply buy a pedometer. The cost around ten bucks. Then start walking and strive for 10,000 steps per day. “Believe me, if you have heart disease, diabetes or peripheral artery disease and you are presently inactive, and you work up to maintaining at least 10,000 steps per day for six months, you will be a new person. And the new person won’t need debilitating heart drugs that transform you – sooner or later – into a zombie who is unable to walk.”
