Walking: The Underrated Key to Longevity | Shebah Carfagna & Nate Wilkins

Let’s go for a walk! In this episode we explore the benefits of a daily activity that most of engage in – if we can - without thinking. It certainly doesn’t require a gym membership or special equipment. 

 Fitness coaches Nate Wilkins and Shebah Carfagna explore evidence that regular walking supports cardiovascular health, cognitive function, mood, and lifespan—without the joint strain of running. 

 In our latest Move For Life conversation, we discuss why technique matters: how foot strike, posture, arm swing, and appropriate footwear can enhance the benefits and reduce the risk of injury; how adding weights, poles, or varied terrain can turn walks into full-body, social workouts that build strength and balance. 

 The takeaway: accessible, low-impact movement that fits daily life can meaningfully improve healthspan.

You should seek medical advice before embarking on a new exercise.

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Transcript

Shebah Carfagna: 0:30

The beautiful thing about walking is you don't need a commitment. You walk every day. So it's easy. You don't need any exercise equipment. It can be done. It's low impact. It works your cardiovascular system.

Peter Bowes: 0:48

Hello again. Welcome to the lifelong podcast on the latest in our series Move for Life with Nate Wilkins and Shebah Carfagna. These are bite sized episodes where we try to explain in about ten minutes some of the basic but most powerful activities that help us live not just longer, but better. Today, one of the simplest. Going for a walk. No fancy equipment, no membership required. Just putting one foot in front of the other. We'll dig into the research on how regular walking can improve cardiovascular health, sharpen your mind, reduce stress, and even help you live longer.

Shebah Carfagna: 1:24

It also gives you fluid motion in the joints and the movements, and that's what you need to keep moving forward. What we say is to keep moving forward in the right direction. So walking is always good. It works on your posture. If you're walking correctly and moving your arms, you're working on your gait, which is important to movement of your muscles and you're training your whole body.

Nate Wilkins: 1:46

Walking can be social as well. If you are somebody who needs to get going with other people and that'll get you going, the social aspect of walking makes it a great opportunity for a group to participate.

Shebah Carfagna: 2:02

And walking is good for people in an office, you know, because when they get those 15 minute breaks, remember people used to go outside and smoke cigarettes. Now you can get up and go walk around the block for your lunch and actually feel better. It makes you feel better because if you work in a sedentary kind of situation, you're sitting all day and that's not good for your back, your spine. It's good to get up. We recommend clients get up every hour or so and just walk around. Take a breath, stretch and move because it's difficult to sit for hours at a time. It also makes you tired. It's hard on your posture.

Peter Bowes: 2:35

Unlike some of the other exercises that we've been talking about, I'm tempted to say, well, I don't need to ask you, how do we walk? Because, as you've already implied, we all, if we're able, were all walking every day. But there are techniques, aren't there, when we're walking for exercise?

Nate Wilkins: 2:52

Absolutely. So can you walk without swinging your arms? Of course. And if you swing your arms a little bit more or faster, it can elevate your heart rate. Or you could actually walk backwards. I mean, there's all types of ways that you can begin to walk. So or incorporate your walking program. So I think what that's what you're asking. Can you make it different and challenging. And I think so.

Shebah Carfagna: 3:22

Yeah walking is important but it's important you understand your footstrike. And I'm very big on this because the foot strike determines the posture in the body. That is the first line of exercise that I believe is that you should have your feet kind of evaluated. Go to a podiatrist to see how you're walking. That is an expert on gait and foot placement on the floor, which affects your overall body because when runners run, they're putting a lot of pressure on their joints, okay. And if they're not aligned, that wears the joints down. But if you're walking, you know, and your posture and your feet placement is correct, it's less impactful on the joints. But you go through a full range of motion. So that's a great place to start. Most people do not give any thought to having their feet evaluated and where they are. And also shoes. Shoes are critical, absolutely that you have the proper shoe with the right amount of support because that can throw your whole body off lead to hip issues, which I have also lead to back issues and it doesn't correct your posture. You never want to do an exercise that sets you back. You want to do things that take you forward that you feel good about.

Nate Wilkins: 4:35

Walking can definitely help you advance. Of course, you need to be aware of the terrain, right? So. Sometimes if you walk and you're on an unstable surface, you got to make sure you plant your feet. Well. So I mean I think that's what you're talking about.

Shebah Carfagna: 4:52

That's another benefit of walking. It's you know, it works your core depending on what level of walking you're doing, if you're walking on terrain or you're hiking. All of that takes strength, balance, core, you know, and a thought process, you know, and you want to incorporate all of that and give it some thought, even if you add weights.

Peter Bowes: 5:11

I was going to ask you about adding weight. You see some people walking with hand weights, power walking. You see others with rucksacks with maybe 30 pounds on their back while they're walking. What are the benefits of that.

Nate Wilkins: 5:24

For me is I can feel like, well, if I have 10 pounds in my hands, and that's what 10 pounds on my body would feel like. But it also gives me strength. It causes my heart rate to increase or vest or as an example, or.

Shebah Carfagna: 5:38

You put a vest on me. I had hip replacement. Eight weeks later, you put a vest on me and I was running down the street. Okay, there's the benefit that increased weight capacity and moving your body. And then when you take that weight off, the upper body is stronger. But not for not for everyone. You know, we have walking sticks. We have walking sticks here, don't we? We're individuals use walking sticks and they use the arms. This is much more popular in Europe than it is in the States.

Nate Wilkins: 6:06

So it becomes more of a full body exercise as opposed just to walking because you're moving your arms and the weight again on your body in your in your hands. Again, you're talking about grip strength. I mean, so there's multiple variables in terms of what when you're carrying weight on either on your body or in your, in your hands.

Shebah Carfagna: 6:29

And grip strength is a predictor of longevity as well. So if you're carrying those weights and walking, there's a recent study that shows that. So anything that's going to promote longevity and constant movement, that commitment. And it's easier to commit to a walking plan. It is to a trainer, to a gym. You can do it with your family. It is fun. You know, you can make it a fun activity.

Peter Bowes: 6:52

It's interesting you mentioned the studies because you're right. There are studies that show that the certainly the speed at which we walk almost instinctively is an indicator of our longevity. It's fascinating.

Shebah Carfagna: 7:06

It is fascinating to delve into that. One of the things that I believe is the more pressure you put on the body, the more able you are to respond to day to day pressures. So, for example, during the pandemic, we spent a lot of time here at the studio and at the house, and we started to do Zoom, and we reminisce now about how we walked through the neighborhood and ran through the neighborhood two, three, four miles. And so that additional stress made our our antibody score was very, very high because we continued to move and continue to put pressure on. And, you know, a lot of people don't think about that because you never want to get frail, and you always want to be able to manage the situations in front of you, whether it's, you know, the state of things, whether it's an illness, you want to have that resilience and strength.

Peter Bowes: 7:56

How does walking compare to running in terms of the metabolic health benefits?

Nate Wilkins: 8:02

Let's say this about running as an example. It puts a lot more pressure on the joints. Walking doesn't necessarily put that same amount of pressure on the joints. So right there you have a benefit.

Shebah Carfagna: 8:18

Runners kind of are stuck into a shorter term. Whereas walkers you can do longer term. Again we go back to shoes footstrike and podiatry. This is 4 to 8 times your body weight. Bam bam bam. Running. So here's your shoes and talking to your podiatrist. But more importantly, the long term that the benefits of walking almost equal the benefits of running that running constantly when you're in your 50s is hard on your joints. And what we find and we have a friend that's a doctor. We cannot get him to strength train. They think that running is the key. When you look at track athletes and Nate's brother in law is an Olympian. They do more than just run. They just don't wake up and say, I'm going to run. They actually train their body for that impact. They train their heart. So there are benefits to both. But in the longer term, if you're just starting and you know you're of age 50 or above, you're better off walking. And a beautiful thing about walking is you can walk outside. You have the benefit of ecotherapy. You can walk on a treadmill, you can walk with weights. You can include your partner, your spouse, your friends. You can make a date out of it. And studies also show that people adhere to walking plans for a longer period and receive greater success than running.

Nate Wilkins: 9:44

They both do things for the cardio vascular system and metabolism. You can lose weight as an as an example, runners sometimes look really, really lean. They almost, you know, used up the muscle. Right. So you you want to be careful and get a delicate balance. Weight loss is maybe different with walking than it is with with running right.

Shebah Carfagna: 10:10

You can see the same same kind of cardiovascular benefits with both. Again, it's about movement and where you are not that pressure to compete in a 5K race. Some individuals go into a 5K and they walk the whole time and they feel absolutely great. But running is very hard on your body and your joints. You don't have that fluid motion that you do with walking. And we're all going to walk.

Peter Bowes: 10:35

Just going back to the social side, the social benefits, something we haven't mentioned, which a lot of people do, I do every single morning and that is walking with your dog. It's a great motivator to have those two little eyes looking or four eyes, in my case, two dogs looking up at you saying it's time for a walk. And off you go.

Shebah Carfagna: 10:54

Actually, pets, there's a study that says people have pets live a longer time because their relationship with the pets are good. But that is your motivation. That is like your alarm clock. That is your appointment time. You have an appointment time with your pet to get out and do that, and I think that is good. And so it's also good if you if you just get up and go because you have to get the body

started again. We get up around here at 4: 11:16

00 today.

We were out at 5: 11:19

30/6.00 moving around. And so that early morning rise and getting up. But the social aspect of it meeting up with friends, your spouse, you know. Relatives.

Nate Wilkins: 11:32

I want to give running a bad, a bad name because running and walking can do both. You can run with your dogs or train with your dogs. You can walk with them. But but the the the risk of running. You can trip and fall. Or you can do that with walking, but less it's lower risk is what I'm saying.

Shebah Carfagna: 11:54

And I think what we're talking about is risk benefit. You know, you're running because what is the purpose of the exercise is what we say you're running because everyone else is running. Then you can fast walk. You know, you have to come to to a point in your mind where you're looking at, you know, healthspan for sure, as well as lifespan. And what injuries will this cause for you to run. But also, again, because Nate comes from a long line of track in his family, people do not understand that you need to train train, lift weights. Any track star you see, or anyone that you see in the Olympics has trained strength, trained and competed, you know, completed a lot of cross training. It's not just get out and let's run.

Peter Bowes: 12:43

So here's the bottom line. Walking lowers your risk of heart disease, boosts brain health, improves mood, helps maintain a healthy weight, and may add years to your life. It's free, easy, and available to almost everyone. The Live Long podcast is a Healthspan media production. I'm Peter Bowes, you can contact me through our website livelong Podcast.com where you'll also find show notes for this episode.

DISCLAIMER: 13:09

This podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. We do not offer medical advice. If you have health concerns of any kind or you are considering adopting a new diet or exercise regime, you should first consult your doctor.