Using muscles releases brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which helps regulate glucose and plays an important role supporting memory and cognitive function.
It's hard to know what level of causality we can attribute to fast walking, as this is a retrospective cohort study. There are likely many factors. I'm disappointed at the headline summary reporting of this research telling older people to walk faster. I wish they were telling people to get into strength and balance training instead, because that will improve walking speed and reduce fall risk at the same time. Also, importantly, this was NOT a test of how fast people walk every day, like during a walk in the park. It was a test of how fast they could walk when timed, for a short duration (8ft per the study documentation). That's a whole different deal and speaks again to the importance of strength, balance and aerobic training as that better enables short bursts of speed vs just trying to walk faster all the time.
And, as of late, we have two additional factors to inspire both speed and load bearing capacity in Seniors here in the Rocky Mountains.
1. The Bear Spray and sidearm now add approximately 8-10 lbs on to the mass that must be accelerated by one or more Seniors in the group.
2. The necessity of not being identified as the slowest member of any group by a stalking predator will inherently drive Seniors to all be the fastest within any group. The old “I don’t have to be faster than the Bear, I just have to be faster than you” rule.
True, there may be a few cardiac failures along the way. But Natural Selection is a cruel master.
It's hard to know what level of causality we can attribute to fast walking, as this is a retrospective cohort study. There are likely many factors. I'm disappointed at the headline summary reporting of this research telling older people to walk faster. I wish they were telling people to get into strength and balance training instead, because that will improve walking speed and reduce fall risk at the same time. Also, importantly, this was NOT a test of how fast people walk every day, like during a walk in the park. It was a test of how fast they could walk when timed, for a short duration (8ft per the study documentation). That's a whole different deal and speaks again to the importance of strength, balance and aerobic training as that better enables short bursts of speed vs just trying to walk faster all the time.
Indeed, causality (and, if it exists, its direction) is always a central question of observational research.
And, as of late, we have two additional factors to inspire both speed and load bearing capacity in Seniors here in the Rocky Mountains.
1. The Bear Spray and sidearm now add approximately 8-10 lbs on to the mass that must be accelerated by one or more Seniors in the group.
2. The necessity of not being identified as the slowest member of any group by a stalking predator will inherently drive Seniors to all be the fastest within any group. The old “I don’t have to be faster than the Bear, I just have to be faster than you” rule.
True, there may be a few cardiac failures along the way. But Natural Selection is a cruel master.
Thanks for your posts. All the best.