Walking to save my life

I TURN 65 on Saturday. That’s half a decade into senior citizenhood. Healthwise, I have been pretty lucky. Since my teens, I have been keeping fit and I played badminton, squash and jogged quite a bit, taking part in a couple of half marathons and runs.

In my 30s and 40s, I bought videotapes by well-known exercise gurus like Denise Austin and Kathy Smith and picked up yoga, kickboxing, and Latin dancing from them.

In my 50s, after I became enamoured of all things Korean, I was a fan of workout videos on YouTube by a group called All Blanc featuring very fit young women and buffed bare-chested men. Ahem.

But as I entered my 60s, it got harder to keep up. During the pandemic, I got lazy and snacked a lot while watching dramas and films curled up in my chair in front of my computer.

Not surprisingly, I gained weight and my annual medical check-ups showed my cholesterol and blood glucose levels getting bad. So I tried intermittent fasting and the Keto diet. That kind of worked as I lost a couple of kilos.

I also started exercising again after I stumbled upon a routine by Jenny McClendon on YouTube for seniors. I became fit enough to survive a seven-and-a-half-hour hike in Seoul’s Bukhansan National Park in May last year.

Then I got lazy again and exercised off and on, but mostly off. This year, my life took a different turn because I moved house, downsizing from a bungalow to a condominium in Bandar Utama, Petaling Jaya.

Indeed, the move led me to lose weight but not in a healthy way as I was thoroughly stressed by it. Then it happened: my friend Sue posted a link in our chat group to a NHK World video on YouTube titled “New findings on walking and running” (tinyurl.com/364y7n43).

I was only mildly interested as I consider myself a good walker and had been a runner. What could be so new about such basic human movements that athletes have mastered? Still, I decided to click on it – and it has changed my life.

The findings were about something called Interval Walking Training (IWT) that Japanese researchers have been reporting on and expounding its benefits for years.

I had tried high-intensity interval training (HIIT) that alternates short periods of intense anaerobic exercise – usually about 20 seconds – with brief recovery periods. It was challenging and I was immensely proud when I finished a workout (with All Blanc) but it often left me exhausted and occasionally with strained muscles.

The NHK video starts off by stating that “inactivity is the fourth leading factor for death in the world”, and goes on to focus on the benefits of three minutes of low-intensity walking (which is a slightly fast stroll that takes about 40% of your peak aerobic capacity, or VO max, which is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can absorb and use during exercise) followed by three minutes of high-intensity walking (or 70% or more of VO max). IWT involves five interval sets making up a 30-minute workout to be done four times a week.

Japanese researchers in Matsumoto, Nagano prefecture, found that this workout improved diabetes and hypertension and could revolutionise cardiac rehabilitation. What’s more, IWT is really good for older people like me!

Previous studies focused on the number of steps one should take for a healthy lifestyle. This time the scientists studied a group of 246 middle aged and older participants who were divided into three groups: One that did not walk as an exercise, another that did 10,000 steps continuously for four days a week and the third which did IWT four days a week.

After five months, the results showed the systolic blood pressure in the IWT group dropped by four times greater than the 10,000 steps group. For the diastolic readings, it was 2.5 times lower. If this could be maintained for five years, the risk of stroke could decline by 40%.

IWT was also good for reducing depression and improving sleep. After watching the whole video that showed what was entailed in IWT, I felt quite inspired to try it out. It seemed very doable and safe for a person my age.

As luck would have it, my new home provided me with the perfect walking route. My condo has a beautifully maintained, covered, and paved walkway on the mezzanine floor with lots of greenery.

I did IWT every morning for two months and I have become fitter.

I have lost 2kg and my latest blood test results are absolutely encouraging. My LDL cholesterol dropped from 4.53 in March to 2.79 this month. My HbA1C test for diabetes dropped from 6.3 to 5.7. My blood pressure readings are really good too.

I still practise intermittent fasting and watch my carbohydrate and sugar intake. A major change is dropping my snacking habit. I have cleared my room and kitchen of tempting tidbits, and I avoid those dangerously tempting aisles full of unhealthy and overprocessed products in the supermarkets. I make my own snacks like steamed groundnuts and granola with lots of seeds and nuts, and my preferred drink is water.

I also do my Jenny McClendon routine a few times a week to increase my muscle tone and flexibility, and every now and then I dance to my favourite K-pop songs.

If I sound like I am patting myself on the shoulder, yes, I sure am because if I can keep this up for the long term, it will totally benefit me. Heck, it would be beneficial to my children and even my fast-ageing country as I wouldn’t be a sickly burden on anyone.

Longevity seems to run in my family. My father passed away at 89 and my mum is now 90. But I have seen how diabetes and heart disease eventually robbed my late dad of his well-being and how chronic pain forced my mother to avoid physical activity, which accelerated her mental decline.

A long life span that is not matched by a good health span is really not worth living. So if IWT is a simple yet effective way to increase my chances of staying robust and healthy, then I would be a fool to walk away from it.

The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.