Walking is a super pill, says survey

“Walking is super pill,” according to the findings of a recently released survey which was conducted among doctors who are treating the four most rampant chronic diseases in the present times -- obesity, cardiovascular, asthma, joint and backache.

“If sitting is the new smoking of the current generation then walking is the super pill prescribed by doctors across categories. But the survey found that the patients are not always following the right dosage of the pill for the desired effects,” noted the findings of the Max Bupa survey.

‘The Max Bupa Walk for Health Survey 2014’, the first of its kind conducted among doctors noted that the aim of the project was also to decode the benefit of walking for patients suffering from various ailments. For the study, general physicians, specialists in respiratory diseases, orthopaedics and cardiologists were interviewed along with 1,000 patients in Delhi and Mumbai.

The study noted that walking is the most prescribed exercise for obese patients (84 per cent), followed by diabetics (76 per cent) and patients suffering from blood pressure (72 per cent), cholesterol (65 per cent) and cardiovascular diseases (56 per cent).