Jerry Morris died on 28 October 2009. He was 99 years old. You have probably never heard of him. He was a professor of public health. More than 50 years ago he produced one of the most famous epidemiological papers of the 20th century.
The study showed that bus conductors were much less likely to die of heart disease than bus drivers. Why? Because the conductors spent their working day walking.
It seems obvious now but in the middle of the last century doctors were genuinely puzzled by the rapidly rising incidence of heart disease. Jerry Morris found one of the main causes: a sedentary lifestyle. He started exercising for a few minutes each day and lived until his 100th year.
Forty years later, Morris’s message was accepted but still largely ignored. The National Fitness survey reporting in 1994 made depressing reading. The proportion of men who are unable to sustain uphill walking at 3mph rises from 4% among 16- to 24-year-olds to 81% of 65- to 74-year-olds. The equivalent figures for women are from 34% to 92%. Even walking on level ground at 3mph is a severe exertion for large numbers of older women. More than 50% of women aged 55-84 are not fit enough to continue walking on the level at this speed.
If you wish to protect your heart, you have to do more than potter in the garden. The exercise needs to be reasonably strenuous. Jogging is not for everyone and a round trip to the gym takes a couple of hours, plus the monthly membership fee is only good value if you visit regularly. The answer is simple: walk.
A half-hour purposeful walk five times a week will reduce your risk of heart disease, diabetes and strokes. Older people sometimes feel they have left it too late. But it is never too late to start and there are no upper age limits. Start gently. Take your time: a 15-minute flat walk in the nearest park, four or five times a week. Within a month or so you will, literally, be taking it in your stride. You are already beginning to protect your heart. Build the walks up. When you can comfortably walk for half an hour in the park, go further afield. Water doesn’t flow up hills. Try following rivers and canal towpaths.
Regular walkers have their own natural gymnasium. There is no membership fee and no treadmill, just some of the finest scenery in the world. Great Britain is the walker’s gym. When you have followed the rivers and canals, and are enjoying walking for a couple of hours, head for the undulating pathways on the coast. Once again, build it up slowly.
When you are comfortable with long coastal walks, you can begin to think of some of the challenges in our national parks. Last year, early on a misty spring morning, I arrived at the cairn at the top of Scafell Pike, the highest point in England, to find a fit-looking, elderly man sipping a cup of hot chocolate. He told me he had first reached the summit as a teenager just before the war. We set off together towards Broad Crag but soon he pulled away. I had not asked him how old he was, but the maths wasn’t difficult.
• Dr John Duckworth is a family doctor and keen fell walker
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