The experts agree: Nordic walking is good for you

Several researchers compared the health benefits of Nordic walking with brisk walking and jogging. They concluded the following:

• "...with regard to short- and long-term effects on heart rate, oxygen consumption, quality of life, and other measures, Nordic walking is superior to brisk walking without poles and in some endpoints to jogging."
• "Nordic walking exerts beneficial effects on resting heart rate, blood pressure, exercise capacity, maximal oxygen consumption, and quality of life in patients with various diseases and can thus be recommended to a wide range of people as primary and secondary prevention."

This particular article was a review of research articles that involved  randomized controlled trials (participants are divided into groups and go through different types of tests; the results are then compared) and observational trials (participants undergo the same test and the results are analyzed). The tests described in those articles involved 1,893 people, a pretty impressive number of people.

In addition to the above broad conclusions, the researchers observed:

• Nordic walkers increased their lung capacity and improved their overall cardiorespiratory fitness because the activity engaged more muscles.
• Nordic walking filled an intensity level between regular walking and running.

• Nordic walkers also lowered their body mass index (BMI) , total fat, LDL cholosterol, triglycerides, and waist circumference.  They also increase HDL cholesterol.

This is a very encouraging statement: "Current [research] literature unanimously identifies Nordic walking as a safe, feasible, and readily available form of endurance exercise training, which exerts a panoply of beneficial effects in a wide range of people with various diseases and the healthy."