Benefits of Walking to Work

Benefits of Walking to Work Go Beyond the Physical

Since the start of our day dictates the rest of it, the benefits of walking to work go far beyond the physical. What's your daily routine like between the time you wake up and time you start work? Maybe you're a night-hawk who savours every last drop of sleep and then makes a dash for it at the last minute, arriving at your full cup of coffee and a flood of emails popping onto a screen. Or maybe, like me, you are up before dawn, treasuring quiet solitude where your time is still your own before the rest of the city invades it. Either way, we all arrive at the work places where we all intersect 5 days a week, more or less at the same time, usually in silence, not always aware how far our minds are travelling from where we actually are. Perhaps muddleheadedness would be a term.

Join the clear-headedness of walking

For the last two weeks I've been walking 45 minutes to work, and often walking home too. The reason I suddenly decided to try walking was that one day I found myself opening a negative conversation with a co-worker who suggested I'd jumped way out of character. I realized I was arriving at work pissed off by the 2 over-crowded bus rides I took to get there each day. So one day I decided to walk instead. Unlike the peppy ones who just arrived from the gym or who already did their daily jog before the workday, we who walk to work are the more grounded segment. We're not on an adrenalin rush, we're just calm and focused. Whether I walk or take the 2 buses to work, it takes 45 minutes each way. Now I feel my clothes loosening, my gait more lively, and my energy higher too.

How to arrive at your job calm and focused

A walk is subjective. You are behind the movie camera, creating your own vision as you walk, depending on what color, tree, house, body of water, or architecture catches your eye. There is a multitude of greenness in everyone's yards, and the lushness takes you to what's green and fresh in your own mind. If you're walking through a commercial area to get to work, the innovative enterprises and lifestyles will inspire your thoughts for the rest of the day. And if you are lucky enough to walk the boardwalk alongside a lake on your way to work, the fresh wind will sweep across the water and give you tons of oxygen. 

This is a great frame of mind to arrive at the workplace in. So park further away and walk to work, or get off a few transit stops further and walk to work. You will be glad that you did, because the benefits go beyond the physical.

7 benefits of walking

• Walking increases blood flow to the brain and calms the mind
• Walking reduces risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes
• Walking increases calorie usage and trim waistline 
• Walking makes you more flexible and coordinated
• Walking causes increased bone density
• Walking helps you to save money on gym fees
• Walking helps to improve sleep

Health Benefits of Swimming

The health benefits of swimming include providing a good cardio workout and building core strength

Swimming Results in Trimmer Hips and Waistlines

Whether you swim in an outdoor pool, lake or indoor pool, the health benefits of swimming cannot be overlooked. Swimming not only builds lean muscle and boosts metabolism, it also gives a killer cardio workout if you do the freestyle stroke.

Swimming makes us feel and look younger

What I like about swimming is that it's a relaxing form of exercise and it's free.

It's hard to find an unhappy person at any outdoor swimming pool. There's something natural about using every muscle in your body while having a surreal weightlessness. It's one place that we can experience the sensation of floating.

Since swimming is good for every age group, it's also an activity that's multi-generational. It's not unusual to see retired people, business people, family people, children and babies all playing together in the middle of the city.

Swimming Reduces the Risk of Heart Disease, Diabetes and Stroke

Beyond the alleviation of stress and its relaxing effects, swimming has other hard-core health benefits:

• reduces our risk of getting heart disease, diabetes or stroke
• prolongs life
• improves flexibility and coordination
• improves balance and posture
• low risk of bone, joint or muscle injury due to weightlessness in water
• low-impact
• builds lean muscle and boosts metabolism
• builds core strength
• results in trimmer waists and hips
• makes us feel and look younger

Reduce Car Usage to Increase Wellness

Reducing car usage improves air quality and slows global warming

Reducing Car Usage Helpful for Wellness

Most of us are aware that wellness is linked to our car usage. A 2013 report from Toronto's Medical Officer of Health about the impact of transportation on health and the environment has urged this city to generate funds without delay for the proposed expansion of transportation infrastructure. Many people in the Greater Toronto Area cannot give up their cars because they have no other means of getting where they need to go throughout the normal course of their day. One wonders how the major city within the GTA region of 6 million people can still have only two subway lines to get suburbanites to the city core.

The study reports that "traffic-related pollution caused about 440 premature deaths and 1,700 hospitalizations each year in Toronto. Mortality related costs associated with traffic pollution in Toronto were estimated at $2.2 billion each year. A 30% reduction in motor vehicle emissions in Toronto that could be achieved through various measures that reduce reliance on the private automobile could prevent about 200 premature deaths and result in 900 million dollars in health benefits annually."  It goes on to say that "Physical activity associated with walking, cycling and taking transit reduces deaths related to chronic diseases and the risk of illnesses such as strokes, heart attacks, obesity, and diabetes, which are among the top ten causes of death in Toronto."

 In a recent commentary in the Globe and Mail, Doug Saunders stated that "it is becoming increasingly apparent that the growing frequency and intensity of windstorms, floods, hurricanes and extremes of heat and cold is a consequence of higher levels of weather-system volatility related to a warming trend caused in part by human-generated carbon emissions." He also urged that pretending to fix the weather won't remove our responsibility to deal with the problem at its root.

Look to Ourselves For Transportation & Environmental Health Initiatives

Although we are not accustomed to having to put limits on ourselves in order to make a better world, we can each do our part in modifying our lifestyle to reduce carbon emissions, as well as consume less energy. Environment Canada reports that 24% of our greenhouse gas emissions are from the transportation sector. Without changes from us, the health and wellness of our families will be comprised tomorrow. We won't be here when ocean levels could rise to the point where our own coastal cities are destroyed, or our children's grandchildren lose family members to weather disasters or the health effects of fracking and other techniques that provide our energy.

Tough Environmental Issues Need to be Tackled

Carbon, air quality, water, waste, land use, and biodiversity are discussed in a report card on the state of health across the Greater Toronto Area. The report card states that with high growth rates expected to continue, congestion and air pollution will get worse unless we plan for higher density living and strong, well-funded regional transportation systems. The GTA grew by over 477,000 people between 2006 and 2011 (Census Canada), mainly in low-density suburban areas.

The GTA is behind New York, Stockholm, the City of Toronto, Melbourne and Sydney in its dependence on cars.

Toronto Salsa Festival on St. Clair Brings Out the Dancer in Everyone

Dancing on the Street is Good For the Soul

Toronto Salsa Festival on St. Clair Avenue July 14, 2013

Toronto’s famous Salsa Festival on St. Clair opens up the street to Latin life, food, music and dance in a participatory way. It’s not a performance, it’s natural theatre art better than anyone could create for the stage.

Age No Barrier in Street Dancing

Looking at today’s turn-out of urbanites happily stepping up their Salsa moves with partners, people of all ages sweating it out in 32° street heat with joyful abandon, there are many, many men and women who are doing salsa and loving it. They are young, old, from every corner of the world, mixed ethnicities, good dancers and bad dancers all strutting their stuff on the Toronto summer streets. 

Anyone at all can turn their romantic sides on and try to move to salsa music. Yesterday and today St. Clair Avenue, the street in my neighborhood where I buy my groceries in Toronto, was turned into a Salsa Festival, and the music transformed our hood into a South American paradise. It was soul-healing and uplifting to watch the whole city click up its heels to such joyful music. 

College After Age 40 is Good For Wellness

Am I Too Old For University or College?

Students who go back to college after age 25 often worry about not fitting in or being “too old”, but what about going to college after age 40? I was surprised to find how many positive and inspiring stories there are about people who get a college or university degree after age 40 or 50. Among these stories is one about a student who started her BA in International Studies at age 55, maintained a 4.0 GPA, was on the Dean’s list, and received a national scholarship after years of being excluded from jobs because she had no degree.

A huge part of studying over age 40 is learning how to recover from failure and make mental adjustments to one’s approach. I had always felt that university only rewards people who follow the rules. I preferred to learn by “doing” (than by studying), and I found that this was the largest hurdle to overcome. In the 1970s I had left my second year university Russian language and literature studies to learn the language first-hand by travelling to the Soviet Union and then living there for an extended period of time. I believed that learning a language by immersing oneself in a foreign culture was much more interesting than sitting in a classroom and learning the grammar.  But it turned out that this approach was not beneficial when it came to getting a good job.

I ended up switching my field of study to digital design. After upgrading in multimedia and web design to further my career and learning a lot about digital marketing on the job over the years, I still found that I was being screened out in the application process for the better jobs because I didn’t have a BA.  So in my 40s I returned to evening study at the University of Toronto to finish my BA.

Overcoming Failures is a Positive Benefit of Going Back to School

My first return to academia in 2005 was in an evening French course at the University of Toronto that I dropped after dismally failing the first test. Time to regroup, I thought. So I re-enrolled in a Canadian Short Story course taught by Professor Sarah Caskey, was very inspired by her encouragement, and did well in the course. Successful courses in European history and Russian language followed. Now I’m on a dual track at university, chipping away at my BA completion through evening literature courses at University of Toronto and pursuing a Digital Marketing Management Certificate in evenings through University of Toronto Continuing Studies. 

Cookie-Cutter Approach to Education Doesn't Always Produce the Best Leaders

I still maintain that following a cookie-cutter approach to education will guarantee you a safe life and not necessarily encourage you to become a progressive, fair-minded leader who empowers others.  Some of the other hidden benefits to returning to university or college over age 40 are:

• The hopefulness and positive energy of students with their whole careers ahead of them is contageous
• What you are learning is valuable for your own well-being and knowledge as well as for improving your job prospects
• You stay current by getting in tune with a younger mindset
• You avoid the pitfalls of just putting in time at a job to pay the bills
• If you have a bad day at work, you can switch your focus to your studies and new career prospects
• Your frame of mind leans towards concepts and ideas, keeping you intellectually stimulated
• You become more open to different ways of doing things as your circle becomes broadened by people outside your usual sphere

Buy Fresh Food and Fast Track to Wellness

Buying fresh food and cooking it will put you onto a fast track to wellness. Buying fresh can be a little more expensive than buying canned or frozen foods, but with a little comparison shopping you can keep your costs down, and it's worth it. Not only do you eliminate many preservatives and chemicals from your diet, it tastes better and you get more protein for your buck.

My 89-year old mother is an inspiring role model for wellness 

I also come from a family of fantastic cooks who all cook real food and buy fresh.

In the past year my mother has sent me three wonderful books on diet, Wheat Belly Cookbook, Moosewood Restaurant, and Moosewood Restaurants Cooks at Home. I don't know if other families are like this, but may of my family's emails, phone conversations and visits have some discussion of great recipes in them.

And it has paid off - at 89 my mother looks about 70, is extremely sharp, has the energy of a 50-year old, and is a great role model for Wellness Over 40.

Back in the 1970s no-one in our family was allergic to wheat

On the other side of the family, my Ukrainian grandmother was another great role model and lived into her mid-90s.

Not only did she buy fresh and cook real food, she grew most of it herself in her legendary garden.

When our family celebrated Ukrainian Christmas Eve on January 6 each year, all of the 12 meatless dishes were home-cooked by my grandmother.

Back in the 70s when this picture was taken, no-one in the family had wheat allergies yet. Was wheat different back then?