Research Says Walking This Much Per Week Extends Your Life

By Aislinn Kotifani

Recent studies show that walking as little as two hours per week can help you live longer and reduce the risk of disease.

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The study from the American Cancer Society followed 140,000 older adults and reported that those who walked six hours per week had a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and cancer than those who were not active, but that walking even as little as two hours per week could begin to reduce the risk of disease and help you live a longer, healthier life.

“Our bodies were designed to move,” said Dr. David Agus, Professor of Medicine and Engineering at the University of Southern California.

The world’s longest-lived people don’t pump iron, run marathons, or join gyms. Instead, they live in environments that constantly nudge them into moving without thinking about it. They grow gardens and don’t have mechanical conveniences for house and yard work. They have jobs that require them to move or get up frequently. And they walk every single day. Almost everywhere.

In Amish communities in North America, one study showed that the average woman logged 14,000 steps per day and the average man logged 18,000 steps per day, and both genders averaged about 10,000 on their day of rest. These Amish communities also had the lowest rates of obesity of any community in North America. This study eventually hit the media and began the movement to reach at least 10,000 steps per day.

Walking benefits:

Activates lymphatic system
Eliminates toxins
Fights infection
Strengthens immunity

Your environment greatly impacts your activity level, but there are ways to nudge yourself to move more if you do not live in a walkable community:

Take several small walks.

Take your dog out for a short morning jaunt around the block. Walk instead of drive to pick up workday lunches. Step outside after dinner with your family. Research shows it is better for you to break up your movement throughout the day than to work out for 30-40 minutes in the gym and sit all day.

Walk to the grocery store.

If your location safely allows you to, walk to the grocery store. Though you may not be able to purchase a week’s worth of groceries in a single trip, you can buy the freshest ingredients and return again later in the week.

Park in a spot furthest from the building.

If you work in the suburbs, in a mall, or a business park with very few parking options, just choose to park far away from the entrance to add a few more steps to your day.

Walk 5 minutes each hour.

Get up out of your desk and take a round of the office. Fill up your water bottle. Get outside to maximize benefits, if possible.

Take one long walk of 30-40 minutes.

Recruit a friend (or your moai!) to take a post-work walk. Forty minutes will fly by before you even realize how far you’ve gone.

Does Diet affect the immune system?

An excerpt from an article on diets and the human immune system – Both most recently becoming important in our medical culture since the onset of /or prevention of Covid- 19.

Benefits of a vegan versus ketogenic diet

Investigators recruited 20 individuals for the study, which included both men and women, individuals of different ethnicity and body size based on BMI calculationTrusted Source. During the first two weeks, the participants would eat only one type of diet, either vegan or ketogenic, and then switch to the other diet for an additional two weeks.

Both diets included non-starchy vegetables and minimum amounts of highly processed food.

However, that is about where the similarities ended.

A vegan diet is entirely plant-based, excluding all animal products, including meat, fish, milk, and eggs. It includes staples like legumes, rice, root vegetables, whole grains, soy products, fruits, and vegetables On the other hand, the ketogenic or “keto” diet, as it is popularly known, embraces meat and fat, generally derived from animal products.

The difference in the diets also extended to more than the makeup of specific foods.

Those on the vegan diet got the majority of their calories from carbohydrates and almost none from fat — 75% carbs and 10% fat. While the ketogenic was the complete opposite, deriving 75% of calories from fat and 10% from carbohydrates.

Although in both diets participants were able to eat freely, those on the vegan diet tended to eat fewer calories overall.

During the study, researchers collected and analyzed samples, including urine, blood, and stool, to look for biological changes caused by the diets. The samples were investigated using advanced fields of study, including:

Proteomics: the study of proteins and their cellular activities
Metabolomics: the study of metabolites and molecules resulting from metabolic functioning
Transcriptomics: The study of all RNA molecules

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How does diet affect immunity?

Diet is known to affect the microbiome, which results in downstream effects on the immune system and disease risk. The significance of the NIH’s finding is that it helps to shine some light on the complex relationship between diet, microbiome, and immunity.

Despite knowing that diet affects the microbiome and that the microbiome affects immunity, the direct mechanisms between diet and immunity still aren’t clear.

“Microbiomes are organisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites) present throughout our body, with the largest composition in the GI tract (small and large intestines)…The co-existence of these microorganisms in the body helps produce immunity by exposing, conditioning, and training the body to numerous organisms since birth,” said Dr. Roopa NaikTrusted Source, MD, who spoke with Healthline about the study and has previously published on the impactTrusted Source of vegan diets on health.

Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, a Professor of Immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine, told Healthline that the NIH research indicates, “We’re coming full circle in terms of trying to understand how diet can impact immunity. It seems that both types of diets are able to help the host cope with viral infection.”

Healthline. Eating Vegan, Keto Diets May Help Improve Your Immune System in 2 weeks. Feb.2, 2024

Written by: Gigan Mammoser

Edited by: Jase Peeples

Fact Checked By: Amanda Ward.

The Blue Zone

A look inside the United States’ first-ever certified “Blue Zone” located in Minnesota

By Erin Hassanzadeh

Updated on: December 1, 2023 / 12:45 PM CST / CBS Minnesota

ALBERT LEA, Minn. — Living to 100 may seem like a major feat, but there are communities around the world where it’s common — they’re called “Blue Zones.”

Minnesota native Dan Buettner is one of the foremost experts on how they work. Buettner’s new Netflix documentary and New York Times bestsellers reveal the secret recipe to longevity.

“It’s really what they’re not doing. They’re not doing anything consciously, and there’s where we get it wrong,” Buettner said. “We think we can resolve to get on the right diet, the right exercise program, supplement plan, superfoods, and get healthier. But it never works.”

Buettner said that the “superagers” are often walking outside, having spontaneous conversations with the people they bump into, having a smaller dinner, and eating mostly a whole food, plant-centric diet.

Several years ago, a Minnesota community decided it wanted families to follow his guidance. Albert Lea made headlines in 2016 when it became the first community in the country to be a certified Blue Zones community.

“I came to Albert Lea in 2008 with this crazy idea of doing this pilot project to help us live longer and better,” Cathy Malakowsy said.

Neighbors like Mary Jo Volkman hopped on the bandwagon, living the Blue Zone life — with more movement, socializing and healthy eating habits.

“I remember people getting together and walking all the time and going to people’s homes to have meals together,” Volkman said.

The community added more events, healthier school lunches and community spaces like dog parks— encouraging people to get together and get moving,

The Mayo Clinic in Albert Lea hopped on board as the largest employer in town with similar values.

“Getting people on board was easy. I think our challenge has been keeping it alive over this time. With anything, it’s going to ebb and flow,” Tricia Dahl with the Mayo Clinic said.

Part of the blue zone build-out was constructing a walkway along the highway in Albert Lea so it allows residents to walk to the local Walmart and do their errands if they want. It’s also safer for pedestrians and cuts down on emissions from cars, moving them closer to their climate action goals.

“We’ve added almost 13 new miles of sidewalks and user trails in town,” Malakowsy said.

Employers like Arcadian Bank keep Blue Zones alive with their healthy vending options. They also have break rooms for nursing moms and workout spaces for movement and respite throughout the workday.

“That’s what we’re trying to do is just make healthy habits available to people,” Jessica Tomschin said.

According to the results of a self-reported survey, residents’ overall well-being, sense of community and sense of purpose is up.

“So many people report that they are thriving. Albert Lea has really dropped in the percentages of people with high blood pressure, same with high cholesterol. For some reason we’re lagging with exercise,” Malakowsy said. “Our tobacco use has dropped down.”

Of course, there are headwinds too.

“Food continues to be our big challenge — access to food on our south side of town,” Malakowsy said.

But community leaders say trying to make life better for everyone brings the “it” factor to Albert Lea.

“We figured out we’re a Blue Zones community, which is all about being a great place to live,” Malakowsy said.

U. S. Dietary Guidelines

Assessing the latest U.S. dietary guidelines: Will they be enough to finally make a difference?

January 20, 2021—Eric Rimm, professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, discussed the recently released 2020–2025 U.S. Dietary Guidelines. Rimm served on the Scientific Advisory Committee in 2010.

What’s your assessment of the new guidelines?

This is the first time that the guidelines include advice for children under two. They now actually address healthy eating across the lifespan. I think this is an important change because of the likely role that early diet plays in laying the foundation for healthy dietary habits and a lifetime of disease prevention. The government made a conscious effort to include more pediatricians on the advisory committee, including Elsie Tavares, who has an appointment in our Department of Nutrition. These guidelines will be used to inform government nutrition policy, so I think that was a good step forward.

What was disappointing to me was that the government decided to take a pass on changing recommendations for daily calories from added sugar. The scientific advisory committee had recommended lowering limits from 10% to 6%, but the official government guidelines kept the recommendation at the upper level.

However, I agreed with the decision to leave out the committee’s recommendation to lower alcohol guidelines for men from a maximum of two daily drinks to one. I was the alcohol expert in 2010, and I believe the science still supports what was in the previous guidelines in 2010 and 2015, that is, up to two drinks a day for men and one for women. I think it is important that if a government body is going to make a substantial change in policy statement about alcohol that it be as scientifically accurate as possible.

Going forward, we need to focus on understanding and promoting healthy drinking patterns. The guidelines are very clear on up to two drinks for men in any given day—not seven on Friday and seven on Saturday. With people drinking a lot more at home during the pandemic, it may be a good time to remind people that binge drinking is harmful.

How can the average person make sense of the guidelines and apply some of the recommendations in their own diets?

The guidelines are primarily aimed at policy makers and academics, so people may find some of the recommendations difficult to translate to their lives. Take counting calories, for example. If you give most people a plate of food and ask them how many calories it contains, they won’t know. I don’t blame them. It’s a really hard thing to think about when you’re making a meal.

I think a perhaps more helpful thing to focus on is eating whole foods instead of processed foods. We know that it’s better for you to eat food in its natural form. Highly processed grains like white bread, for example, strip all the good stuff out. Another important step is to choose healthier proteins—chicken and fish over red meat, or soy proteins over animal proteins.

Much of the guidelines do discuss healthy dietary patterns including the Mediterranean Diet or vegetarian diet. To help make them affordable, you can buy inexpensive proteins like dried beans, and also incorporate frozen fruits and vegetables into your diet.

What nutrition policy changes do you hope to see in the next few years?

In 2015, the advisory committee recommended incorporating sustainability into the dietary guidelines—for example, encouraging a more plant-based diet to lower the production of greenhouse gases. This was not included in the government’s official 2015 guidelines, and it did not improve in 2020. The 2020 guidelines were set up by the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services with very specific parameters around what topics the scientists on the Advisory Committee could address, and sustainability was not listed. Recently, the EAT-Lancet report has really become the source for thinking about sustainability in the way we eat, but I think these conversations still have a place in the guidelines. I’m optimistic that they will eventually be included.

I’m also hopeful that standards around school meals set during the Obama administration, such as lowering amounts of saturated fat and sodium, will be restored. We’re essentially training kids’ palates for unhealthy food for life, which is so disheartening, especially since we know it’s possible to serve healthy school meals that kids will actually eat and enjoy.

Another important area is the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Food insecure people in the program should be free to purchase what they want, but I think we are setting them up to fail. We need to provide incentives to help people on SNAP buy healthier food. There is robust evidence to show that if you do this, it works.

—Amy Roeder