2011 Streak 54/365: Memory and walking

2011 Streak 54/365: Walk - 4.8 miles, Time - 1hr 20min, Weather - misty grey with spitting rain

Neapolitan cottages! These recently painted artisan cottages, each a different colour, remind me of a block of neapolitan ice cream. Mind you the flavours are a bit confusing: could be vanilla, cool mint, and parma violets (though Parma adds a touch of Italian city confusion).

Now this is not a big thing, or even particularly interesting, it is just something I noticed, which caused a momentary flicker of amusement. 

Flickers of amusement or curiosity are an important part of the pleasure of walking. You not only have the time to notice the little details, your posture is more upright and encourages you to look around and see things (though that might only be me). Also, because you are under no great physical stress, there is no temptation to go into yourself and become absorbed in how the body is coping. The act of walking occupies no great part of you consciousness so you are free to look at everything around you or let the mind free-associate, whichever you prefer.

I wonder if this freedom of attention contributes to findings that walking improves your mental faculties. 

There has been a lot of coverage recently about some research by Kirk Erickson of the University of Pitsburgh which seems to show that walking not only improves memory, it is associated with growth in the hippocampus part of the brain. He divided 120 sedentary people in their mid to late sixties into two groups, one group walked for 40 minutes, three times a week, the other group stretched.

After only a year of this moderate exercise the hippocampus of the walkers grew by about 2%, whilst for the stretchers that part of the brain shrank.

Now the generally accepted pattern for the brain is that it loses cells and shrinks over time. Evidence that the process can be reversed in a particular part of the brain is enormously heartening. The next stage of research would be to find out exactly how this happens, which could have enormous practical implications. In the meantime we are left with more proof that we can all benefit from aerobic exercise. It is another affirmation of  the wisdom of "mens sana in corpore sano" (or if you are a certain Japanese shoe manufacturer "anima sana in corpore sano")

The research has nothing to say as to whether other aerobic activities are just as good, or better, or whether more exercise, or more intense exercise would be better.

For the moment we will have to leave it with walking and, as I am doing quite a lot of it at the moment, I am quite happy with that.