Is Walking After a Meal Good For Your Health?
The benefits of exercising on your health have been proven from time to time. Open any article on weight loss treatment online, and you’ll find a clause suggesting you to keep yourself active. Moreover, moving your body frequently keeps you from many serious ailments.
The recent trend among the fitness community, though, is focussing a lot on taking simple walks after your meals too. People say that you shouldn’t exercise just after eating something. But is this light activity has any health benefits?
In this article, we’ll be discussing various potential benefits of taking a walk after your regular meals.
Better Digestion
One of the very major benefits that people talk about in favor of taking a walk after meals is better digestion. Experts say that moving your body after walking can promote stimulation in your stomach and intestines. This makes the food inside your system move through your digestive tract faster. Additionally, light exercise like walking, after a meal can protect your GI tract from various ailments, such as constipation, heartburn, IBS, Diverticular Diseases, Colorectal Cancer, etc.
Improved Blood Sugar Level
Another potential benefit of walking after meals is that it manages your blood sugar level very efficiently. This particular effect can be very beneficial for people with type I and II diabetes.
In a study in the year 2016 on people with type II diabetes, it was found that a 10-minute walk after a meal is better than even a 30-minute walk at any random time in order to manage your blood sugar level. The reason for this phenomenon is that walking after you have eaten something can prevent sudden excessive spikes in your blood sugar level. And if you are a diabetic patient, this may help you reduce the requirement of medicines and insulin.
Fewer Chances of Developing Heart Diseases
For a very long time, people have associated exercising with better heart health. Exercising can help you keep your cholesterol level in control. And this helps you reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke.
But how can we connect it with taking a walk after meals?
Actually, there are several studies that prove that exercising lightly multiple times a day is better for your heart health than exercising hard only once. So, if you mimic this pattern by walking for a few minutes after every meal, you can keep your heart safe from a lot of diseases.
Experts recommend you should exercise moderately for at least 30 minutes every day for at least five days a week. So, by simply walking for around 10 minutes after all three meals, you can cover this requirement very easily.
Helps with Weight Loss
As discussed earlier, one of the points that you can find in almost every article on weight loss treatment online is “take a walk after your meals.” Experts say that a very major reason for this is, to lose weight successfully, you need to burn more calories than you take in. And walking after your meals can aid you in it.
Having said that, you should keep in mind that the relationship between walking after meals and weight loss is still based on anecdotal evidence only. And to solidify our facts, we need some more in-depth research.
Improved Blood Pressure
A lot of people in the country right now are suffering from the problem of high blood pressure. And experts say that walking regularly can help you reduce your overall blood pressure by up to 13 percent. But here too, doctors say walking for a smaller time multiple times a day is better for the purpose than walking one time but for a longer time. Given this, they say you should prefer walking for at least 10 minutes after every meal of yours.
Concluding Words
Health experts who argue in favor of walking after meals say that it has several amazing benefits for your health. In fact, the list above is still very small. There’s much more we can add to it. But that’s the story for next time.
Right now, the doctors say that, in order to obtain maximum benefits from your post-meal walks, you should do it immediately after you have eaten. Also, if you are just beginning to add this to your regime, start with a small 10-minute walk and slowly increase this duration.
In the end, if you have a pre-existing medical condition, the practice may help you. But you should still talk to your doctor before starting it.