In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration

by Shane O'Mara

Hippocrates famously claimed that ‘walking is the best medicine’. Yet in our modern world, most of us spend all day indoors sitting down, which can have terrible consequences for our health and well-being. We spend less time outdoors than ever before. One major study in the USA showed that people spent 87% of their time in the artificial environment of offices, houses, shops and other buildings.1 Some have even claimed (only somewhat exaggeratedly, in my view), that ‘sitting is the new smoking’. The sentiment behind this statement is straightforward: our bodies are built for regular movement, and profit from it. Sedentary life is fundamentally unhealthy, leading to decline in muscle volume and strength.2 Moreover, long periods of inactivity produce not dissimilar changes in the brain. One interesting study has recently found that lack of activity is even associated with personality change, and by this I mean change for the worse.3 Overall, lower levels of physical activity were associated with changes in three of the ‘Big Five’ factors of personality (these are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, easy to remember as OCEAN).4 Lower levels of physical activity were associated with declines in openness, extraversion and agreeableness, suggesting a ‘detrimental’ pattern of long-term personality change. Even minimal levels of activity were found to have a moderating effect on personality change. Those individuals who were the most inactive ...