Regular walks in the fresh air can reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, doctors are convinced. They also have a good effect on sleep and have an impact on human performance. What else are useful short walks - read in our material.
Walking in the fresh air has always been important to maintain our health, especially in today's times when we are increasingly forced to stay at home. According to Oleg Volkov, cardiologist and medical director of Angioline, fresh air helps to get rid of accumulated stress, it saturates the body with oxygen, soothes, relaxes and tones the brain cells. Hiking also helps to increase heart rate, increase blood circulation and strengthen the heart, and lower blood pressure. What's more, walking outdoors can help reduce body fat, blood sugar and cholesterol levels.
“Taking short walks throughout the day can be just as rewarding as going to the gym or dance class. Try to make walking a part of your daily activity. It is best to walk for at least 30 minutes every day. Use a pedometer to keep you active every day. Today it is on every phone. Start with 2000 steps and increase your performance every week,”Oleg Volkov recommends.
Oksana Lishchenko, a doctor at the startup Health-buddy.ru, notes that physical activity improves mood, relieves stress, promotes weight loss, and in the long term can reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes and diabetes. Also, to strengthen the musculoskeletal system, improve endurance, outdoor games or Nordic walking will be useful for older people (especially in winter, when the body needs more energy to maintain body temperature). Such a pastime gives positive emotions and an improvement in the quality of sleep.
“It is important to choose the right place for walking - not near the road and shopping centers, it is better to choose parks where there are many trees and more oxygen and benefit for your lungs (especially for people with anemia and hypoxia),” says Oksana Lishchenko.
When you go outside, your body is saturated with oxygen, says Oleg Volkov. As a result, we get the necessary boost of energy, feel better and think faster. Moreover, walking in the fresh air, even in winter, helps us get the dose of vitamin D, which we often lack.
“If we do not go outside for some time, our body will begin to suffer from a lack of oxygen, which will lead to poor performance, our tone will go down, and with it our mood. And this, in turn, can cause depression,”advises Oleg Volkov.
Therapist Andrei Kondrakhin says that a walk can really be a method of successfully combating depression, and the lack of fresh air will lead to a deterioration in psychological health, general malaise, lack of motivation, headaches due to lack of oxygen, which can affect pressure.
Yulia Perekatova, an ophthalmologist at the ZEISS Vision Center ophthalmological center, draws attention to the fact that the lack of walking harms not only the body as a whole, but also the eyesight. This is especially important in our time when you have to work for a long time at the computer.
Going out for a walk, Yulia Perekatova advises doing a little exercise for the eyes:
Blink for ten seconds. Open your eyes wide for three to four seconds and close again, repeat several times. Draw eights (horizontal, vertical) with your eyes. Repeat two to three times. Move your eyes diagonally. Look right, left, up, down for one minute. Close your eyes closed 10-15 times. Look at objects that are in close proximity to you (one to two meters), then move your gaze to more distant objects (five to eight meters) and focus on them, repeat on different objects several times.
If, for health reasons, you still cannot walk, you should ventilate the apartment at least several times a day. Andrey Kondrakhin recommends airing at least three times a day, one hour in summer and five to ten minutes several times a day in winter. Before going to bed, you should also ventilate the room, as well as in the morning when the air is filled with dust during the night.
“If we are talking about an office where there are 10-15 people besides you, then it is worth ventilating the room every one and a half to two hours, leaving the window open for 5-10 minutes. At this time, it is worth leaving the room, so as not to overcool, or to put on outerwear. If you spend time with your family at home, then it will be enough to ventilate the rooms twice a day: in the morning and in the evening. In any case, the opposite effect should not be expected here: the more often the windows are opened, the cleaner the air will be, which means that your body will receive a greater flow of oxygen, which will only have positive consequences for you,”concludes Oleg Volkov.