Walk or not to Walk?

Everyone knows that walking is good for you. In fact — walking is considered to be one of the best things you can do for your body. With health benefits from reducing excess weight and improving balance and coordination to managing high blood pressure and even reducing the risk of cancer. Not to mention that walking will reduce stress, improve your memory and give you a overall more positive mental attitude.

Sounds like you should walk every chance you get and maybe even swap your morning ride to work for more time consuming walking? Well, if you are lucky enough to live in a low-density rural area with clean air and lots of green, then it definitely would be a good choice. No doubt about it it!

But our cities are dense urban environments, which are heavily trafficked by buses and cars. Ironically pacing down a busy street with high levels of pollution will actually cancel out the positive effects of walking. A recently publised study suggest that people should minimise walking on streets with high levels of pollution because this curtails or even reverses the cardiorespiratory benefits of exercise. Instead, walking exercise should be enjoyed in urban green space areas away from high density traffic.

It seems like this puts you in a pretty controversial situation in your everyday life — you want the benefits of walking, but you really don`t want the negative effects. So what excactly is the right thing to do here?

The solution is actually much simpler than you might think. For us city dwellers the smart choice here would be a quick and easy transport option to get around the city. A mobile and swifty electric two-wheeler will do the job perfectly. This way we can reduce the time spent in the traffic and instead we could escape the streets and use the extra time to enjoy walks in the park. :)