Walking is at the heart of Western culture

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is supposed to have said, "I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs" (Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking. Available in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audio). Did he really mean walking helped him ruminate? I've read that meditation is emptying one's mind of distractions, but, if walking was a favorite activity of philosophers, did they engage in that kind of discipline or did they walk to jump start their thinking of particular topics?

Some saw walking as a cultural act that began with Rousseau and traced it back to Greeks to legitimize it. They pointed out the school in Athens had a covered colonnade called peripatos that facilitated walking. Today we see peripatos in words like peripatetic.

Here's a summary of the relationship between walking and philosophy:

Location	Setting	Activities	People
Athens	Grove that predated Aristotle's school	Taught rhetoric; delivered information and ideas to public	Sophist (sophia = wisdom) philosophers
Athens	Area with shrines to Apollo and Muses	Teachers and students wandered among the classes	Called Peripatetic philosophers
Athens	Vicinity of stoa (colonnade) Greek architecture accommodated walking groups	Exchanges between teachers and students while walking	Stoic philosophers
Europe Philosophers copied the Greeks and walked	Philosophenweg (Heidelberg)	Walked to think and relax	Hegel
	Philosophendamm (Konigsberg)	To take a break from writing	Kant
	Philosopher's Way (Copenhagen)		Kierkegaard
		Favorite activities: reading, music, walking	Nietzsche

I read some time ago that people involved in highly cognitive verbal activities like writing, teaching, and even politics, tended to take up less verbally-intense activities like painting or low level physical exertion activities like walking. In my personal experience, I've had ideas come to me while driving, which is very low intensity and the most physical exertion involves managing the steering wheel.

Given Rousseau's statement, walking promotes an active mind. In fact, to call walking a cultural act is to see in it a vigorous quality that relaxes the body while invigorating the mind.

Nordic walking and regular walking

Researchers continue to publish findings about Nordic walking versus regular walking.

• "In total cholesterol levels, the Nordic walking group showed a significant decrease…The normal walking group showed a significant decrease…However, the control group did not show significant changes."
• "In triglyceride levels, the Nordic walking group showed a significant decrease…The normal walking group did not show any significant changes…The control group did not show any significant changes."
• "In HDL cholesterol levels [good cholesterol], the Nordic walking group showed a significant increase…The normal walking group did not show any significant changes…The control group did not show any significant changes."
• "In LDL cholesterol levels [bad cholesterol], the Nordic walking group did not show any significant changes…The normal walking group did not show any significant changes…The control group did not show any significant changes."

Systematic review of literature (European Journal of Human Movement in 2014)

• Physiological.
• "The vast majority of studies found statistically significant increases for oxygen consumption, heart rate and caloric expenditure during NW compared to normal walking and differences in lactic acid levels, especially in untrained participants."
• "…intense arm movement with poles increases the main physiological parameters compared to walking…[other research pointed out] the increase in oxygen consumption ranged between 5% and 63% depending on the intensity of arm movement and the technical performance of participants."
• "the effects on the body of intervention programs based on the regular practice of NW (between 3 and 4 times a week for several months) point to improvements in muscle strength of the upper limbs up to 40% and reductions in neck and shoulder pain."
• "…despite the increase in calorie consumption during NW, effort perception does not significantly increase. Furthermore, given the greater stability provided by the poles, the authors believe that NW can be a perfect activity for elderly people and for subjects with balance and/or stability problems while walking."
• Biomechanical.
• "…differences between NW and normal human gait for a given walking speed: longer step, longer contact time, and faster execution speed as well as a reduction in step cadence." In other words, you walk faster.
• "…lower loads on the knee joint during NW compared to walking. Furthermore, this reduction depended on the technical implementation: the higher the technical level, the lower the joint load." In other words, the better you get, less stress on your knees.
• "…during NW plantar pressures in the central metatarsals are reduced by up to 40%. The authors also show that the regular practice of NW has a residual effect during walking, local pressures on the central metatarsals
• being significantly reduced." In other words, the conditioning from Nordic walking makes regular walking easier on your feet.
• Fitness.
• "Programs targeted at the elderly have resulted in improvements in upper limb strength, cardiovascular endurance and flexibility compared to traditional fitness programs for the same population group."
• "NW has also been found to be 106% more effective in improving the speed in comparison with a traditional walking program."
• "In cardiac rehabilitation programs, NW is a better stimulus in terms of cardiac rehabilitation and in improving the patients’ functional ability."
• "…positive results were found in training programs for an obese population), in patients with vestibular disorders, in patients with chronic lower back ache in subjects suffering from claudication as a consequence of peripheral arterial disease, patients with Sjögren's syndrome, associated with rheumatism, in individuals with Parkinson's disease, in depressed patients, in breast cancer patients, in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease."
• Less than positive results:
• "…patients who had suffered hemiparesis [paralysis on one side as from a stroke] perceived NW to be less comfortable compared with a four-way support walking frame or a simple stick."
• "…all groups improved in terms of weight loss but no significant improvement was found in glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), evidences do not support the role of NW as beneficial stimulation from the physiological point of view in patients with type 2 diabetes, although no contraindications in this respect have been proved with such populations either."

A couple of thoughts: The positives outweigh the negatives.

• The hemiparesis finding makes sense. Nordic walking does require control of the poles by both arms, so that condition could make Nordic walking more difficult. The Nordic walking technique used wasn't clear from the article.
• There's an approach called Exerstriding that could work with this condition. In that technique, you don't let go of the poles on the backswing.
• Keenfit is another version of that technique. Notice in the linked videos the walkers don't let go of the poles in the backswing.
• In the full Nordic walking technique, you let go of the poles in the backswing to get full upper body extension. Notice how the walker's hands open in the backswing, allowing him to let go of the poles and achieve full upper body extension.
• It would be interesting to see if the Exerstrider/Keenfit techniques would work better for those affected by hemiparesis.
• The A1c finding also makes sense and goes to the Nordic Walking Guy's 3rd rule: Don't eat like a teenager.
• Nordic walking has great results in lowering blood sugar, but it affects your blood sugar level at the time of the walk.
• A1c is a measure over multiple months, so there will other times someone's blood sugar levels will higher, affecting the average reading.
• Diet is the key to managing A1c.

Taking research with a grain of salt

Periodically you'll read the newspaper article about some study that has been conducted and be told that, as a result of the study, you should act in a certain way. The most common articles about research that I've read our about food and exercise. This article make some points about research on those topics to help us think more clearly about what researchers tell us.

Main points:

• The correlation between inputs (food, exercise) and results (disease, longevity, weight) tends to be much lower than the correlation between things like smoking and lung cancer.
• Much of the research has not yet been reproduced to see if the same results show up.
• Sometimes the way things are measured is not the most accurate. For example, participants may be asked to keep a diary of what they eat. It would be easy to say that people may not keep the most accurate diaries.

One team of researchers reviewed studies on the links of particular foods and cancer, and found studies linked just about everything we eat to cancer. Depending on the study, foods were either linked to cancer or had no link.

So the next time see an article in the newspaper breathlessly stating that something will help you live forever or will kill you, take it with a grain of salt (no doubt, salt is just fine, or is it?)