If you walk for exercise, try this trick to increase your pace: Walk and chew gum at the same time.
According to the Society for Neuroscience, it’ll help you walk faster! That’s because we tend to chew gum more quickly than we walk. We chew about 75 times per minute, but walk only 60 steps per minute. But our brains aren’t great at processing two speeds at once. So you’ll
subconsciously start to walk faster – at the pace of your chewing.
In a study at Old Dominion University, both young and older participants had the same results……They walked faster to keep pace with their chewing rate. So if you want to walk more quickly, pop a piece of gum!
Now there’s even more data connecting walking speed to a longer life. 7 years longer. Here’s the latest from the Journal of the American Medical Association:
For their experiment, researchers followed nearly 5 thousand adults between ages 40 and 85 for 10 years. They had their study participants wear activity trackers to gauge their levels of aerobic exercise. And the Participants also answered questions about their exercise habits.
After crunching the numbers, the researchers found that study participants who raised their heart rates with daily, brisk walking, specifically, taking a 10 minute power walk once a day…. boosted their life expectancy by 7-10%, on average. And taking a brisk half hour walk boosted life expectancy by a full 17%.
The science is clear: Spending just 30 minutes a day raising your heart rate could lengthen your life by up to 7 extra years!
