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There are times when all you want to do is get away from the sofa, the TV, and any of life's major challenges and take a good long walk in the fresh air.

Father and daughter walking in woods
Image caption,
Whether you live near woods, fields, or city centres, walking is a cheap and cheerful way of exercising

What you may not realise is how much of a favour you're doing for yourself, physically and mentally, by taking that lengthy stroll! We spoke to Dr William Bird MBE, a GP and huge walking advocate, to find out some interesting facts about walking, and what it does to our bodies.

It improves our immune system

When the world went through the Covid pandemic, it brought our immune systems - and their importance - into the spotlight. If you鈥檝e been wondering how to improve the strength of yours, then look no further than a brisk walk.

Dr Bird explained how viruses look to attack our immune system when they enter our bodies. They target things such as natural killer cells or NKCs.

He said: 鈥淭here's a lot of them in your nose, a lot of them in your gut, and a lot of them in your airways as well.鈥 When a virus enters your body through any of these places, it comes across these NKCs.

But how do they work? Dr Bird explains: 鈥淭hose natural killer cells don't know that virus at all as they've never seen it before, but they just know it's bad, so they kill it. And then eventually the rest of the immune system called the b cell immune system comes on board and starts creating antibodies.鈥

More NKCs means a faster immune response, and Dr Bird says 鈥測our natural killer cells are hugely increased by just going on a brisk walk.鈥

It helps calm internal inflammation which in turn helps with鈥 pretty much everything

Dr Bird says that a lot of health issues we can suffer, both mental and physical, have chronic inflammation to blame. Inflammation is your body鈥檚 response to harm; it鈥檚 an attack against bad things in order to protect you. However, if there鈥檚 nothing like a virus to attack, this healing property can actually do lots of damage.

Dr Bird explains that 鈥渆ating rubbish, not doing any exercise, and being stressed鈥 all create what's called chronic inflammation in the immune system", and this is a huge contributing factor in lots of diseases we can fall ill to.

Girl stressed in front of laptop
Image caption,
When we're stressed, we release a hormone called cortisol, and this can contribute to chronic inflammation

But walking does a number of things that helps calm this inflammation down. One of those is by releasing from the muscles - walking triggers this release, and then they travel round the body calming inflammation. Another is that walking targets something called visceral fat that sits around our organs. It helps get rid of it, thereby reducing inflammation.

It keeps our cellular batteries working properly

You might remember the phrase 鈥榤itochondria is the powerhouse of the cell鈥 from biology lessons, but do you remember why they鈥檙e so important?

Dr Bird says that, in essence, 鈥渢hey are the batteries, they power us. We are utterly 100% dependent on mitochondria, otherwise we'd stop working within a millisecond.鈥

And those mitochondria need to be exercised all the time - they鈥檙e designed to be constantly moving. If you keep them still, they stop working the way they should.

Dr Bird compares it to the batteries in your mobile phone: 鈥淲hen you charge your phone for too long the phone gets warm and, that warmth is electrons leaking out of the battery, which is why the battery doesn't last very long.

鈥淪o, just like a battery, when you sit there with loads of calories coming in, and no calories going out, you're overcharging the mitochondria.鈥

And when mitochondria are overcharged, they release unstable atoms known as free radicals. 鈥淭hose free radicals cause untold damage, and guess what? They cause inflammation.鈥

By punctuating long periods of sitting down with walking, you鈥檙e helping to prevent these free radicals from escaping - like when you take your phone off charge when it鈥檚 at 100%.

It helps improve mental health

Okay, so this you may have heard this quite a lot, but do you know how walking actually helps our brains?

Dr Bird can explain: 鈥淲hen you're walking you release something called , or BDNF. The only thing that gets it out into the body is exercise - it's absolutely dependent on us moving around.

鈥淚ts amazing feat is that it actually untangles all the bits of the brain that have become all tangled up and broken.鈥

And, say it with me now - it helps reduce inflammation. Dr Bird says inflammation not only causes physical problems, but it can cause issues with our mental health too. So by walking and reducing it, you can help tackle things like anxiety and depression.

It can boost creativity

Aristotle, Nietshzhe, Kierkegaard - what do they all have in common? No, it鈥檚 not just that they鈥檙e great philosophers. They all apparently did their best thinking while walking!

Dr Bird refers to walking to get your creative juices flowing as the 鈥榩hilosopher鈥檚 walk鈥: 鈥淎ll the great philosophers used to do it, go for a walk, to do their thinking. And at the end of it you are far more likely to have got a good idea than if you've been sitting down, doing nothing.鈥

Plato and Aristotle painting
Image caption,
Raphael鈥檚 masterpiece the School of Athens depicts Aristotle鈥檚 love of walking and talking, as you can see here pictured alongside his teacher, Plato

And they were quite open about how much it helped them - Friedrich Nietzsche wrote 鈥淎ll truly great thoughts are conceived by walking鈥, and the word for Aristotle鈥檚 school of philosophy, peripatetic, also means travelling and walking from place to place.

It can help strengthen and repair joints

Dr Bird says he鈥檚 come across the idea that joints only have a certain amount of wear and tear in them before they begin to weaken.

For that reason, some people are sceptical about using their joints too often, and can sometimes avoid walking.

But Dr Bird says the complete opposite is true: 鈥淭he more you walk, the more you repair your cartilage, and the thicker the cartilage becomes and the stronger the joint becomes.鈥

It can help us live longer

Two researchers called Gianni Pes and Michel Poulain found that in Sardinia, and a number of other places, there seemed to be an incredible amount of centenarians (people who live to 100 and over). They named these areas 鈥榖lue zones鈥, and set out to discover why people in them lived so long.

They discovered, through extensive interviewing of these elderly residents, nine different elements of their lifestyle that they all shared. One was that they were very family orientated, another was that they had a clear sense of purpose. But as Dr Bird explains: 鈥渢he big one is that they all walk. None of them go to the gym.鈥

The researchers dubbed this element 鈥榥atural movement鈥 - in essence, people who exercise in ways that we鈥檝e evolved naturally to move, live longer, healthier lives.

This article was published in May 2021 and updated in May 2024

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