A recent birthday present for my father (an avid walker) led me to the book “52 Ways to Walk” by Annabel Abbs. Annabel’s insights and advice about making walking a ritual for health and wellness—including walking backwards—is inspiring motivation for our community as we enjoy the beautiful weather this summer!
Charlotte: Welcome. Can we start with you sharing a bit about yourself and your background as an author?
Annabel Abbs: I started writing fiction about 10 years ago, and my fiction has always been very research oriented. I love doing research because I like finding out about the lives of long-lost men and women, which is why in my book, 52 Ways to Walk, I included these interesting little anecdotes about people’s experiences walking in the past. My fiction is normally historical, it's always about real people who lived in real places—this means I have to do lots and lots of traveling around and spend time in libraries and archives and just read all sorts of obscure documents in very old-fashioned handwriting. At the same time, I started writing fiction, I also started blogging about health. As a result, I developed such a love for health-related topics that I began to enjoy reading really dense, data-heavy medical reports. Writing 52 Ways to Walk was great because it brought fiction and health together.
Charlotte: You’ve written a range of books both fiction and non-fiction. Why a book about walking, and why now?
Annabel Abbs: I really wanted to bring the two strands of my writing—historical fiction and science – together, and this turned out to be a really hard thing to do. I was struggling to find a way, but one thing I did know is that I really love walking. I'm an obsessive walker! I have previously written a book about walking called Windswept in which I wrote about trailblazing, historical women who walked. In Windswept, I included lots of scientific information. And my UK editor pulled all the science information out and said, "Annabel, it doesn't really work, writing the stories of these women and then chucking in these bits of science." So, she took all of the science parts out! I was left with this great big pile of what I thought was really interesting information about the science of walking and I remember thinking, I just don't want to put that in the recycling bin. I called my agent and said, "I've got an idea. I've got all this research here, and I think I've probably got 52 different ways of walking, and I could do one a week." And fortunately, my agent loved the idea. That’s how I ended up with two books about the subject of walking—one medical and one literary.
The timing was perfect since it was the mid-pandemic lockdown, and the world had started walking to get outside and have some freedom. The book launch coincided with a study that showed that the people in lockdown who varied their walks had better mental health.
Charlotte: I was fascinated to read about the link between your immune system and light in your book. Could you elaborate on this?
Annabel Abbs: Yes, a lot of that came out in COVID because I wrote a lot of the book in the pandemic. The news about people dying more frequently from Covid-19 who had lower vitamin D levels guided my research. We live such interior lives now; some people are in offices all day, rarely getting out. This idea that we need to be outside more is so very important. We need sunlight on our skin, for at least 20 minutes. The sunlight does two things: when it falls on our skin, it activates vitamin D, which we know is very important. Sunshine also activates T-cells, cells we now know can fight cancers, COVID-19 and other infections. Having sunlight on your skin every day can be a really good thing to do. However, for the past 20 years or so we’ve been slathering on sunscreen—rightly so—in order to prevent skin cancer. We need to find a balance. Even if it's chilly but sunny, I like to roll up my sleeves to try and get a bit of sunlight onto my skin.
Charlotte: Staying on the topic of light, could you please describe the benefits of walking soon after you wake up, and the effect that this has on your circadian rhythm and overall alertness?
Annabel Abbs: We have this little clock sitting right in the base of our skull—almost literally behind your nose and above your mouth, and that little clock is the timekeeper for the whole body. Every single cell in our body has a clock in it, weirdly enough—tiny little clocks that can recognize light and dark. That’s how our body knows when to wake up, when to be sleepy, when to fall asleep. First thing in the morning, blue light is quite strong so it sets your rhythms for the whole day. Essentially the light tells your body, "Now you must wake up," and then your body [does the mental math of], "In 15 hours or so, I'm going to be feeling sleepy." Your body’s melatonin (the hormone that your brain produces in response to darkness) is being programmed from the minute you wake up. If you wake up and you just stay in a dark room and don't go out for hours, then your clock becomes confused. It doesn't know whether it should be feeling alert or not, and later on, doesn't know whether the melatonin should be kicking in. My general rule is to go out within an hour of waking up, so that you can get your body set for the whole day.
It’s also of note how much stronger outdoor light is in comparison to the lighting in a gym or even beside a window. A cloudy day in Britain typically has around 16,000 lumens of light, whereas a sunny day can have up to 70,000 lumens. The fluorescent lighting of an indoor gym averages around 500 lumens, which is a marked decrease. This means that in order to feel more awake and set your circadian rhythm, a walk outdoors can be quite powerful
Charlotte: I want to shift to talk about walking and time. First, how long does a walk have to be to experience health benefits? Second, do walks have to be at a brisk pace?
Annabel Abbs: There's a chapter in 52 Ways to Walk about a 12-minute walk. The 12-minute data was based on fast walking, so if you can only go out for a short walk, you might want to try and walk as briskly as you can. If you tend to be a slow walker, just extend the walking time to 30 minutes or so. For lifting your mental state, the sweet spot has been found to be a 45-minute walk.
Our bodies, also, have hundreds of these biomarkers called metabolites. After 12 minutes, 80 percent of these biomarkers were shown to have changed for the better. One metabolite in particular called glutamate is a biomarker for heart disease, shortened life span, diabetes, and even brain shrinkage, and with 12 minutes of walking it was shown to decrease by 29 percent. There was also a metabolite associated with the breakdown of fat stores that increased by 33 percent when someone walked for 12 minutes. If you think about when we just sit there and nothing is moving, nothing is really being activated. But as soon as you start moving, and the faster you move, that is when the benefits begin.
Charlotte: I would love to learn more about the benefits of walking after eating a meal.
Annabel Abbs: Walking after eating is definitely not a fast walk! It’s more about enabling everything to start working through your body because this kind of walk is quite good for digestion. Otherwise, you eat a great big meal and then you just sit there, everything just sits there too. When you take a walk, your blood is moving, oxygen's moving through -- all of the nutrients are getting passed from your intestines into the blood where they can be taken to the places in the body that need them.
Charlotte: Something I’m curious about is your recommendation around walking backwards. Can you tell me more about why it is beneficial and how to incorporate it into a walking routine safely?
Annabel Abbs: Walking backwards is best to try out on a flat road/ stretch of land. And of course, try to do it when there aren’t people around because you don't want to bump into people or fall over! As for the benefits, walking backwards changes how your spine is aligned and can really help with lower back problems. It's also very good for your knees because when you land, you put your feet down in a completely different way. You land much more softly, and you land on the balls of your feet rather than on your heel, which sends shock waves up to your knees.
Also, when you walk backwards, you're much more focused on your body and how you move, not taking it for granted in the way that we do with forward walking. It requires focus, and mindfulness; we are more engaged. If you are brave enough, running backwards burns far more calories than running forwards does, however, it is not an easy thing to do!
Charlotte Lawrence is a rising senior at Manchester Essex Regional High School. As the school district’s student health ambassador, she seeks to raise awareness about issues that impact the health of our students and community.
