Ten Good Reasons to Go for a Walk

By Thierry Malleret, Mary Anne Malleret and Klaus Schwab

Ten Good Reasons to Go for a Walk is succinct and accessible to all. It offers its readers well researched arguments enlivened by personal anecdotes to convey the vital message that walking can dramatically improve our health - both physical and mental; while also having the potential to make our world a better place. To quote Dennis Snower (President of the Institute for the World Economy, Germany): "Like me, you will find that this book will change your life, making you healthier and happier."

Ten Good Reasons to Go for a Walk has been acclaimed by many other prominent global decision and opinion makers from all walks of life.

In the words of Arianna Huffington: "The benefits of walking are seemingly endless. As the Mallerets show, we don't just feel better when we walk, we think better, too. Using science along with compelling stories of famous walkers throughout history, Ten Good Reasons to Go for a Walk will get you off the couch to better navigate our stress-filled world."

Richard Carmona (17th US Surgeon General) says: "Over two thousand years ago Hippocrates told us that walking was the best medicine. Today the Mallerets have provided us with an elegant and simplified explanation of the value of walking to become a healthier you!”

Not only doctors but economists too recognize the power of the simple act of going for a walk: “Thierry and Mary Anne are absolutely right. Walking is vital. The scientific evidence is clear. You can do it for exercise without thinking. Even better you can do it mindfully” to quote Lord Richard Layard (Director, Wellbeing Programme, Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics,UK).

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543914306

Book preview

Forum

INTRODUCTION

We’ve always walked, often and everywhere - be it in the mountains, on the coast, in the country, in towns and cities both familiar and less so; on high mountain paths and pavements, on and off the beaten track - mostly together, sometimes alone and other times with family and friends. We’ve walked for pleasure: to reach a rock face in the Alps or to pursue a public footpath in the Chilterns or just to see what might be down a side street in Moscow, but also out of necessity: as an effective method to get from one meeting to another or not to miss a train. However, whenever and for whatever reason we walk, it’s almost always with a distinct feeling of elation and enthusiasm. We’ve also (initially albeit unwittingly) walked as a sort of therapy. If feeling a bit down or irritated, our natural response has always been to go out for a walk. This never failed to bring us home feeling better and we began to realize that our frame of mind had improved with every step we took. The same has proved more than effective in a professional context too. When faced with a thorny question, the solution to which was proving elusive, some timely walking invariably yielded an answer. Exactly how or why this worked was something of mystery, but the link between thought clarification and stepping out of the office was, for us, beyond doubt.

When a few years ago, almost by accident, we embarked on a professional collaboration with the US-based Global Wellness Institute, our perspective on our long established, much-loved activity of walking was altered forever. In the light of this new exposure to the work of neuroscientists, medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and wellbeing academics, what we had intuitively felt and personally experienced has gradually evolved into science-based evidence. The positive effect of walking goes well beyond a transitory moment of pleasure: it is quite simply nothing short of a physical and psychological ‘necessity’ – for each of us individually and for our societies as a whole.

Thus emboldened, we decided to give the shackles of convention a shake and test the alchemy of pleasure and hard thinking in a business context. Premised on the conviction that the efficacy of walking might also be harnessed to make better investment and strategic decisions and taking advantage of its ideal location in Chamonix, our company, the Monthly Barometer (a brokerage for ideas and investment advice) took the audacious step of offering its clients (‘serious’ individuals with very successful professional track records and limited tolerance of anything that could be construed as faddish) the opportunity to work while walking. The results spoke for themselves. And this was no doubt because walking both calms and stimulates, sharpens minds, dispels doubt, slays the monster of procrastination, releases feel-good endorphins and is a source of inspiration and creativity. For all these reasons, more and more leading decision makers are beginning to recognize that not only are walking and working compatible, but that walking actually augments the efficiency with which we work.

Furthermore, walking has the power to heighten our sense of personal responsibility vis-à-vis our society while also offering the chance to impact positively on some of its most pressing problems – the environment and inequality, to name but two.

However we may choose to walk, it has the power to change our lives (and potentially those of others). To put this hypothesis to the test, it is not necessary to travel to the mountains or far afield.

Philippe Bourguignon, one of the Monthly Barometer’s strategic investors – now an entrepreneur and private investor following a very successful career as a leading global CEO – is a perfect example. Recently, Philippe took the decision to walk to his office (in Washington) rather than driving there. This has, at his own admission, changed his life. In his words this is how: I have got to know my neighbourhood better. The twenty minutes on foot allow me to prepare mentally for the day ahead; I not only reflect on current deals and the day’s meetings, but I also make the odd phone call to friends and family. You can’t imagine the good it does me! It also gives me the chance to talk to strangers I would not otherwise have encountered and to discover many things you miss from a car. When I arrive at the office, I am relaxed and so much more ready to face a long working day. In the evening I do the same in reverse. This walk home serves as my decompression chamber, I do a mental de-brief of the day, I idle a little bit allowing my mind to wander, and thus I arrive filled with energy and enthusiasm for the evening! In these few short sentences Philippe does us the huge favour of alluding to nearly all of our good reasons to go for a walk. The ten boxes are almost all ticked.

It’s good for the body

It’s good for the brain

It’s good for the mind

It’s good for decision-making

It’s good for coping with an accelerating world

It’s good for equality

It’s good for the economy

It’s good for the environment

It’s so good it’s going to be made compulsory

It’s a must – say writers and philosophers

We’d be thrilled if this book incites some of you who are not walking enthusiasts to change your minds – and follow in Philippe’s footsteps. In this way, we are convinced that walking will become for you much more than a necessity and yield not only a new perspective on the world but also a profound source of personal pleasure as intense as it is accessible.

1

IT’S GOOD FOR THE BODY

At least once a year, some of the Monthly Barometer’s clients are amongst the growing number of international movers and shakers – global CEOs, entrepreneurs and other decision or opinion-makers – who take themselves off for a medical check-up at the Mayo Clinic, an American medical centre in Rochester, Minnesota with a world-class reputation for its integrative and holistic approach to healthcare and wellbeing. Under the slogan Once you take the first step you are on your way to an important destination: better health, the Mayo Clinic is one of the first in the world to offer its patients a treatment programme with walking at its core. Two thousand years earlier, when he said, Walking is man’s best medicine, Hippocrates had already recognised the same thing. Now, one of the most prestigious universities of medicine in the world, the Harvard Medical School, has added its voice, asserting: Every walk we take is a step towards better health. Countless other medical studies are also calling walking a miracle cure and a wonder drug. 

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that governmental agencies and public health organizations increasingly communicate with us about the benefits that walking has on our body and its physical health. It is in the air du temps! The range of these benefits combined with their ubiquitous and multifaceted nature make it difficult to place them in any particular order in terms of priority. To take one example, the government of Canada (a country of endless and fabulous walking opportunities) chose to say that regular walking has a direct impact on the cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems, by: (1) reducing the risk of coronary disease and stroke, (2) lowering blood pressure, (3) reducing cholesterol levels in blood, (4) increasing bone density, hence preventing osteoporosis, (5) managing the negative effects of osteoarthritis, and (6) easing back pain. The Harvard Medical School goes further, stating that walking not only improves cardiac risk factors such as cholesterol, blood pressure, vascular stiffness and inflammation, but also helps protect against dementia, peripheral artery disease, obesity, diabetes, depression, colon cancer, and even erectile dysfunction.

The proof in the pudding of these walking-related health benefits is in a meta-analysis of research published between 1970 and 2007 in peer-reviewed English-language journals and conducted by two scientists from University College London. After sifting through 4,295 articles, they identified 18 studies that met their quality standards. In aggregate, these studies evaluated 459,833 participants who were free of cardiovascular disease when the investigations began. Each of the studies collected information about the participants’ walking habits along with information about cardiovascular risk factors, including age, smoking and alcohol use, and in many cases, additional health data as well. The participants were tracked for an average of 11.3 years, during which cardiovascular events