Walking and running are the most common forms of physical exercise for American adults. However, whether they are good or bad for health has always been controversial. Now, various new studies that directly compare running and walking provide some answers to this question. What's their conclusion? It depends almost entirely on what you want to achieve.
If your goal is to control your weight, whether my opinion is shallow or not, running is much better than walking. Last month, a research report was published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports, and its title was concise-"Running is better for losing weight than walking". The researchers collected relevant survey data from 65,438+05,237 walkers and 32,265,438+05 runners, which were recruited by the National Running and Pedestrian Health Research conducted by Lawrence National Laboratory in Berkeley, California.
When taking part in this study, participants should provide their weight, waist circumference, diet and mileage of walking or running every week, and test these data again after six years.
When I first took part in this study, almost all runners were thinner than walkers. This is the case from beginning to end. In the past few years, runners have kept their weight and waistline much better than those walkers.
This difference is especially obvious among participants over 55 years old. Runners of this age don't run much, and generally don't consume more calories in exercise every week than older walkers. However, their body mass index and waist circumference figures are significantly lower than their peers.
It is not clear why running is better for weight control than walking. But it seems obvious that running burns more calories per hour because it requires more effort than walking. That's true. But this Berkeley study and other studies show that runners can still control their weight better under the condition of roughly the same energy consumption-that is, walkers go out for a few hours and consume the same calories as runners in a week's exercise.
Studies have shown that another small but interesting reason is the impact of running on appetite. In this research report published in the Journal of Obesity last year, nine experienced female runners and ten women who insisted on walking exercise were asked to report to the Sports Physiology Laboratory of Wyoming State University in two different situations. One day, the two groups will walk or run on the treadmill for an hour. The next day, they all rested for an hour. In both cases, researchers will monitor the total energy they consume. They also collected blood samples from these volunteers to monitor the levels of some hormones related to appetite in their bodies.
After completing these two experiments, these volunteers rest in a room full of buffets, and they can choose at will.
Pedestrians are hungry when they come out, and the food they eat is 50 calories higher than the calories they consume when they walk on the treadmill for an hour.
Runners, after choosing their own food, consume nearly 200 calories less than when running.
After exercise, it is also found that the level of a hormone called casein peptide in the blood of runners is much higher, which has been proved to have the effect of suppressing appetite. However, those walkers' casein peptide levels did not increase, and their appetite was very strong.
Therefore, if you want to eat less, you must run first.
But according to other methods of testing health, new scientific research shows that walking is at least as effective as running, and in some cases, walking seems to be better. A research report published this month (data collected from the runner and pedestrian health study) found that both runners and pedestrians can reduce the risk of cataract compared with people who don't like sports, which is an unexpected benefit brought by exercise.
A new research report published in Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology last month (the data used are collected from the health research of runners and pedestrians, involving many fields) may be the most gratifying finding, that is, the probability of runners suffering from hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and their cholesterol levels are much lower than those who don't like sports. But those walkers are better off. For example, if runners run for an hour every day, their risk of heart disease can be reduced by 4.5%. People who consume the same amount of energy every day can reduce their risk of heart disease by more than 9%.
Of course, few runners can consume as much energy as runners. Paul williams, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the first author of all these reports on running and walking, said, "To be fair, if you want to make walking consume the same energy as running, you must walk 1.5 times the distance and spend twice the time."
On the other hand, people who start walking exercise are often in worse physical condition than those who start running exercise, so they can get more benefits from exercise.
No matter what your health goals are, Dr. Williams said, "Facts have repeatedly proved that running or walking is much better than not exercising."
To prove this, please look at an additional appetite research experiment. In that experiment, volunteers sat for an hour in an experiment, without doing any exercise, running or walking. After the experiment was completed, they felt hungry and ate 300 calories more than the few calories they had just ingested.