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Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure—Stephen Wolfram Blog
Could one actually work like this, typing and everything? After my “heart-rate discovery” I decided I had to try it. I thought I’d have to build something myself, but actually one can just buy “walking desks”, and so I did. And after minor modifications, I discovered that I could walk and type perfectly well with it, even for a couple of hours. I was embarrassed I hadn’t figured out such a simple solution 20 years ago. But starting last fall—whenever the weather’s been good—I’ve tried to spend a couple of hours of each day walking outside like this:
Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong - The Huffington Post
The United States spends $1.5 billion on nutrition research every year compared to around $60 billion on drug research. Just 4 percent of agricultural subsidies go to fruits and vegetables. No wonder that the healthiest foods can cost up to eight times more, calorie for calorie, than the unhealthiest—or that the gap gets wider every year. It’s the same with exercise. The cardiovascular risks of sedentary lifestyles, suburban sprawl and long commutes are well-documented. […]Only 13 percent of American children walk or bike to school; once they arrive, less than a third of them will take part in a daily gym class. Among adults, the number of workers commuting more than 90 minutes each way grew by more than 15 percent from 2005 to 2016, a predictable outgrowth of America’s underinvestment in public transportation and over-investment in freeways, parking and strip malls. For 40 years, as politicians have told us to eat more vegetables and take the stairs instead of the elevator, they have presided over a country where daily exercise has become a luxury and eating well has become extortionate.
Faster. Slower. How We Walk Depends on Who We Walk With, and Where We Live. - The New York Times
People in Uganda, it turned out, walked much more quickly than those in Seattle when they were by themselves, their pace averaging about 11 percent swifter than lone walkers in the United States.
But they were slower in groups. Both men and women in Mukono strolled at a more leisurely pace when they were with others, especially children. Their pace when accompanied by children was about 16 percent slower than when they were alone, whether they carried the children or walked beside them.
The opposite was true in Seattle. There, people sped up when they walked with other people. Men were particularly hurried when walking with other men, but both men and women increased their pace if they had children in tow. Their average walking speed when they carried or accompanied children was about 20 percent speedier than when they walked alone.
Research reveals dangerous midlife switch of ditching activity to sit still -- ScienceDaily
Investigators were able to draw the conclusions using data from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study, also known as CARDIA, which started following 5,115 participants between ages 18 to 30 more than 30 years ago, measuring their activity levels with an accelerometer, or activity monitor, that is similar to a pedometer.
These decreases of physical activity over a 10-year period in middle age were observed in both men and women. However, the decline was steepest among black men who typically started being the most active but reduced their activity levels by nearly one hour daily. Black women began as the least active, and continued to have the lowest physical activity levels 10 years later.
Why Sitting May Be Bad for Your Brain - The New York Times
It was equally apparent when people broke up their sitting after two hours, although blood flow rose during the actual walking break. It soon sank again, the ultrasound probes showed, and was lower at the end of that session than at its start.
But brain blood flow rose slightly when the four hours included frequent, two-minute walking breaks, the scientists found.
Interestingly, none of these changes in brain blood flow were dictated by alterations in breathing and carbon dioxide levels, the scientists also determined. Carbon dioxide levels had remained steady before and after each session.
Differential Experimental Effects of a Short Bout of Walking, Meditation, or Combination of Walking and Meditation on State Anxiety Among Young Adu... - PubMed - NCBI
Significant group × time interaction effects were observed ( P = .01). Post hoc paired t tests revealed that state anxiety significantly decreased from baseline to postintervention in the meditation ( P = .002), meditation then walk ( P = .002), and walk then meditation ( P = .03) groups but not the walk ( P = .75) or control ( P = .45) groups.
Sitting-Time, Physical Activity, and Depressive Symptoms in Mid-Aged Women - American Journal of Preventive Medicine
In main effects modeling, women who sat >7 hours/day (OR=1.47, 95% CI=1.29, 1.67) and women who did no physical activity (OR=1.99, 95% CI=1.75, 2.27) were more likely to have depressive symptoms than women who sat ≤4 hours/day and who met physical activity guidelines, respectively. In interaction modeling, the likelihood of depressive symptoms in women who sat >7 hours/day and did no physical activity was triple that of women who sat ≤4 hours/day and met physical activity guidelines (OR 2.96, 95% CI=2.37, 3.69).
Midbrain 'start neurons' control whether we walk or run -- ScienceDaily
The researchers identify populations of 'start neurons' and show, for the first time, how the two regions in the midbrain can act both in common or separately to control speed and to select context dependent locomotor behaviours.
"By identifying the midbrain 'start' neurons we complement a previous study where we found 'stop cells' in the brainstem that halt locomotion. Together, the start and stop cells define the episodic nature of locomotion," says Ole Kiehn.
The study breaks new grounds in locomotor control and is important for understanding the normal brain function in mice. And the authors believe that the results might benefit humans with disabled locomotion as well.
How walking benefits the brain: Researchers show that foot's impact helps control, increase the amount of blood sent to the brain -- ScienceDaily
"New data now strongly suggest that brain blood flow is very dynamic and depends directly on cyclic aortic pressures that interact with retrograde pressure pulses from foot impacts," the researchers wrote. "There is a continuum of hemodynamic effects on human brain blood flow within pedaling, walking and running. Speculatively, these activities may optimize brain perfusion, function, and overall sense of wellbeing during exercise."
"What is surprising is that it took so long for us to finally measure these obvious hydraulic effects on cerebral blood flow," first author Ernest Greene explained. "There is an optimizing rhythm between brain blood flow and ambulating. Stride rates and their foot impacts are within the range of our normal heart rates (about 120/minute) when we are briskly moving along."
The secrets of the world's happiest cities | Society | The Guardian
Researchers for Hewlett-Packard convinced volunteers in England to wear electrode caps during their commutes and found that whether they were driving or taking the train, peak-hour travellers suffered worse stress than fighter pilots or riot police facing mobs of angry protesters.
But one group of commuters report enjoying themselves. These are people who travel under their own steam, like Robert Judge. They walk. They run. They ride bicycles.
5 minute bout of walking boosts mood
This may be partly due to the guideline's inclusion of a 10-minute minimum time-bout requirement for PA. Our findings suggest that a shorter, 5-minute bout of PA is adequate to elicit psychological health benefits. This may be encouraging to individuals who perceive “lack of time” as an exercise barrier. Individuals may also perceive this shorter time requirement to be less physically demanding. Notably, the present study demonstrates that mood-related benefits of a 5-minute exercise bout can occur from a self-selected walking pace. A self-selected pace is generalizable, and encouragingly, this may positively influence an individual's confidence in his or her ability to sustain activity and his or her anticipated enjoyment of the activity. Health care providers should consider the positive benefits of a 5-minute bout of exercise when prescribing treatment for patients suffering from mood-related disorders.
Street walking as subversion
“There is still this element of transgression for a woman to walk in public and claim her space and claim her right to be there without being spoken to or troubled or commented on or even looked at with anything other than neutrality,” says Elkin. Women bothering or stalking men on the streets—like Calle—tend to be seen as subversive or crazy; men bothering or stalking women on the streets, by contrast, are seen perhaps as unfortunate but to be expected. The flâneuse has always had to deal with this unequal expectation. Her accomplishments, therefore, have been even harder won.
Why We Walk on Our Heels Instead of Our Toes | UANews
As Webber explains: "Humans land on their heel and push off on their toes. You land at one point, and then you push off from another point eight to 10 inches away from where you started. If you connect those points to make a pivot point, it happens underneath the ground, basically, and you end up with a new kind of limb length that you can understand. Mechanically, it's like we have a much longer leg than you would expect."
The secrets of the world's happiest cities | Society | The Guardian
Researchers for Hewlett-Packard convinced volunteers in England to wear electrode caps during their commutes and found that whether they were driving or taking the train, peak-hour travellers suffered worse stress than fighter pilots or riot police facing mobs of angry protesters.
But one group of commuters report enjoying themselves. These are people who travel under their own steam, like Robert Judge. They walk. They run. They ride bicycles.
Virtual reality study finds our perception of our body and environment affects how we feel: Interaction of bodily, spatial cues serves to regulate emotions, exploratory behavior -- ScienceDaily
As one might expect, a bouncy gait intensified people's experience of the environment as negative and frightening when they were walking high off the ground. But surprisingly, at ground level a bouncy gait gave people more positive emotions about the environment. This meant high up, a bouncy gait made people explore the environment more below the horizon, whereas on the ground it increased their exploration above the horizon.
Research has found that walking for two hours a day could cut inches off your waistline | UK | News | Daily Express
Replacing sitting for two hours a day with standing led to an 11 per cent lower BMI on average and a three-inch smaller waist. Average blood sugar levels also fell by 11 per cent.
Dr Healy said: "These findings provide important preliminary evidence that strategies to increase the amount of time spent standing or walking rather than sitting may benefit the heart and metabolism of many people.
Why it makes sense to bike without a helmet
According to a 2006 French study, pedestrians are 1.4 times more likely to receive a traumatic brain injury than unhelmeted cyclists.
Stanford study finds walking improves creativity
The research comprised four experiments involving 176 college students and other adults who completed tasks commonly used by researchers to gauge creative thinking. Participants were placed in different conditions: walking indoors on a treadmill or sitting indoors – both facing a blank wall – and walking outdoors or sitting outdoors while being pushed in wheelchair – both along a pre-determined path on the Stanford campus. Researchers put seated participants in a wheelchair outside to present the same kind of visual movement as walking.
Different combinations, such as two consecutive seated sessions, or a walking session followed by a seated one, were also compared. The walking or sitting sessions used to measure creativity lasted anywhere from 5 to 16 minutes, depending on the tasks being tested.
Three of the experiments relied on a "divergent thinking" creativity test. Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. In these experiments, participants had to think of alternate uses for a given object. They were given several sets of three objects and had four minutes to come up with as many responses as possible for each set. A response was considered novel if no other participant in the group used it. Researchers also gauged whether a response was appropriate. For example, a "tire" could not be used as a pinkie ring.
The overwhelming majority of the participants in these three experiments were more creative while walking than sitting, the study found. In one of those experiments, participants were tested indoors – first while sitting, then while walking on a treadmill. The creative output increased by an average of 60 percent when the person was walking, according to the study.
A fourth experiment evaluated creative output by measuring people's abilities to generate complex analogies to prompt phrases. The most creative responses were those that captured the deep structure of the prompt. For example, for the prompt "a robbed safe," a response of "a soldier suffering from PTSD" captures the sense of loss, violation and dysfunction. "An empty wallet" does not.
The result: 100 percent of those who walked outside were able to generate at least one high-quality, novel analogy compared to 50 percent of those seated inside.
In the late 1880s, walking marathons were all the rage
There were other races. Especially popular was a men’s round-the-clock six-day race: The competitors walked from just after midnight on Monday, June 10, until just before midnight the following Saturday, stopping only occasionally to rest inside tents within the oval track.
“The largest number of spectators that has yet been attracted by the pedestrian exhibitions was present,” the Post reported. Fourteen men competed.
One entrant, an Englishman named Alfred Elson, was a veteran of long-distance walks who, like many pedestrians, considered alcohol a stimulant. He imbibed liberally the first two days of the race, and by Tuesday night he was so drunk he fell headfirst over the railing that ringed the track, rendering himself unconscious.
By Friday, only three men remained: Dan Dillon, Martin Horan and, far behind, poor concussed Elson. They were a bedraggled bunch: sleep deprived, dehydrated, likely malnourished and perilously close to delirium. Dillon won the race with 454 miles. Horan was second with 450. Elson was a distant third with 239.
