Wednesday, November 06, 2019

Faster walkers: healthier minds

Years ago, striding up our street with my long-legged teenage son in tow, he complained that I walked quickly and wanted me to slow down. I think I've walked like that since I used to walk with his shorter but fast-legged father in my twenties, thirties and forties. I walk particularly fast in the late morning after I've had a cup of coffee. Don't dawdle in front of me when I'm shopping down the high street - I've even heard someone say as I passed, "What's the rush?"
This article "Slow walkers have slower minds" appeared in the newspapers in October, though a more positive headline is: "Faster walkers have healthier minds in the long run" (I note the editorial pun). It pleases me to read the article since it encourages me to think I have a healthy mind, whatever that means.
I have to use my mind because I'm still learning and am chuffed this year to have passed a couple of exams when I said ten years ago I wasn't taking any more. I don't need to take any more, but one theory paper was for my second Dan tae kwon do and I did well in that despite it being only and all memorisation, and the other paper was the Cisco CCNA1 where you have to understand as well as remember. Remembering quickly is so hard.
So if I walk quickly, will I remember better? Does remembering better mean you have a healthier mind. I think I need to go to the source research to find out what a healthier mind means.
The source doesn't define a healthier mind but associates speed of gait with cognitive development and aging, Slow gait in middle age went with poor physical function, which probably means you aren't very agile or fit. Also slow gait went with getting older faster, so if you don't want to age, perhaps the advice is to speed up your walking. Thirdly, it reports that slow gait went with "poorer neurocognitive functioning across multiple cognitive domains". Does that mean you don't think very well or you think more slowly? So which comes first, thinking not very well or walking slowly. Whichever! I now feel vindicated about my fast walking, hope my son's walking has sped up and remember that his late fast-legged father was a fast and highly intelligent thinker.