Episode174 with Annabel Abbs
Every Walk is an Opportunity to Grow the Brain
SHOW NOTES:
Learn more about Annabel at AnnabelAbbs.com and AgeWellProject.com.
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
Ginny Yurich Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and I am beyond tickled to have Annabel Abbs, who also writes as Annabel Streets here with us today. Welcome.
Annabel Abbs Oh, it's so nice to be here, Ginny. Thank you for having me.
Ginny Yurich So, Annabel, I was at a conference just this past spring, and I had someone come up in passing to me and say, I read this fantastic book called 52 Ways to Walk, and I think you will love it. And it was intriguing to me. And so I picked it up and then I couldn't put it down. So, Annabel, I love it. It's called 52 Ways to Walk The Surprising Science of Walking for Wellness. Enjoy. One week at a time. This is actually your sixth book. So you have fiction and nonfiction. And a lot of this nonfiction is about wellness. So can you just tell us a little bit of your story? I would love to know some of your story about your author journey, and it's really neat that you have different types of books that you write.
Annabel Abbs Yes. Yes. So I, I started writing fiction, actually, and my thing was really a forgotten women, so women who had achieved something and been overlooked. So as we know, there are quite a few of them lurking in the wardrobe of history. So I started with that route. But I've always been really, really interested in health and particularly in walking. So I sort of grew up in a in a slightly bohemian family. We were all homeschooled and we lived in the middle of nowhere in Wales, and neither of my parents could drive. So walking was very much in my DNA. And so for ages, even while I was writing fiction, I kept saying to my agent, I really want to write about walking. And she was like, Well, walking, that's a bit dull. What is that to say? So then I just started, you know, I started as part of my health blogging. I was reading more and more studies and spending a lot of time on on pub lands, that huge database of research studies. And I was discovering those more and more, you know, the interest about walking in terms of just our wellbeing, our mental health, our physical health. So after five or six years of writing fiction, but really wanting to write about walking, I sort of slightly switched sides too. So now I sort of I toggle, I do fiction, which is fantastic for just creativity in my imagination. And then I have my writing line, my writings, a walking writing line, which I do actually from a walking desk. So I try to write those books while I'm actually physically walking. That's a slightly jumbled answer to the question about the writing journey. I'm really from there. It's just grown and grown. So now I also write for lot of newspapers and magazines, and again, it's often on on walking, sometimes on parenting, sometimes on looking after elderly parents. So all of those things that we are all sort of grappling with every day.
Ginny Yurich Right. And it is an interesting thing, you know, that your publisher or your whoever you're working with said, well, wouldn't that be dull? And I was telling someone just last night, I have this interview tomorrow and she wrote this book 52 Ways to Walk. And they were like, well, what are the 52 ways? And then I could only think off the top of my head. I could only think of five or six. And then I was like, she came up with 52 and they're all interesting. Annabel I write in my books, I take notes and I feel like I underlined almost the entire book because it was so interesting, so many facts where I was like, Wow, what a cool thing to know. And when I posted, I posted a quote from the book and it got so much feedback and a lot of people wrote that they had read your book. Someone wrote that she lost so much weight because it inspired her to walk. And at the beginning of the book, in the introduction, you talk about how there's this statistic that the average American is walking about 1.4 miles per week. I thought it was going to say per day, but it was actually per week. And also in the introduction, you say when we move, hundreds of intricate changes take place inside our bodies. Just a 12 minute walk will alter 522 metabolites in our blood that will affect the beating of our heart, the breath in our lungs and the neurons in our brain. So you grab in the audience right from the introduction, and then you go into these 50, you know, was it hard to come up with 52?
Annabel Abbs Well, actually, I ended up with more than 50, so I ended up with 54. And my publisher said, Well, that's still 54. That doesn't sound right. Let's do 52. So, no, it wasn't hard. But as you'll know from reading the book, I do include walks that, for example, I talk about walking and singing. That isn't something that most people do. But you know, when you've got kids, you're trying to get off a mountain. You know, I've actually done a lot of walking and singing. So I thought things like that, which don't fit into your normal walking book, I felt they deserved a chapter. So I do go slightly and just. Areas that some people might say, well, that's not really walking, is it? But to me, it is.
Ginny Yurich It totally is. And marching. And people have always walked to song and rhythm and beat. And we certainly have done the same thing. If you're on a hike in, you're out there and you're trying to get everyone pumped up to make it back. Yes, we include singing and music. That's fantastic. Okay. So can we start with the cognition part? Yeah. How we walk affects our brain functioning. How does that work?
Annabel Abbs Yeah. So it's actually very, very simple. So I'll use very, very simple terminology. As soon as we put our foot down and it hits the ground, that just that movement, that slap onto the ground immediately propels blood that has been sitting on our backsides most of the time. It propels that blood down through our bodies and up again and all the way up to our brains. It just that very simple. That very, very simple. Coming down your reasonably hard. Oh, so hard. But as in a normal step, coming down onto a surface just starts that whole process. And of course then when you've got blood and oxygen flowing all the way through the body, that's fantastic for the horse and for the lungs. But it's also really good for the brain because of course it goes up to the brain blood and can just circulate the whole time if we're moving, when we stop moving. Of course, it just stop circulating and the whole thing just slows down. And I think we have to remember that our bodies are built, they are built to move, and they're built specifically to walk. So we love cycling and kayaking and climbing and all those things, but our bodies really are designed to move one step in front of another with our arms swinging. And a really very simple fact. The motion is so simple. If you are someone to describe that movement, they wouldn't be able to because it's just come so easily to us. And so, so were designed to be moving, were designed to be outside, which of course we always forget. So movement outside is much more powerful for brain and body than movement indoors, although I do say, you know, even indoors, even if you're revising for inside or you just need to have 5 minutes and you can't get outside or it's dark, just, you know, just walk around your kitchen table. And most important thing is to be up and moving. So the first thing with the with the brain is that you just got this continuous flow of oxygen and blood through all of the cells. But then, of course, there are hundreds of other things happening. You mentioned they know that over 500 tiny little changes and it's probably it's probably in the thousands of changes to proteins and metabolites that are affecting things that we don't necessarily associate with movement, but things like our immunity. So how how strong our immune cells are. And again, if we're healthy and in our body, our brain is also better. So we need to play. I think we need to think much more about the brain, the body being completely bound up with each other and bound up with movement. And the same way that our lives were once bound up with movement and we didn't. If you look at diaries and journals from sort of 500 years ago, no one ever talks about going for a walk. The idea that you go for a walk is a very modern thing. In the past, walking was like eating and sleeping. You just did it and you didn't really comment on it or organize it. It was just part of your life and we've lost that. But I think we're slowly moving back towards that as people become more and more aware of the benefits.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. One of the things that was mouth dropping to me was you had written that Canadian researchers observed 500 walkers and they could identify with 70% accuracy who was going to have cognitive impairment. So when you're talking about this connection between the brain and the body, that this movement is helping to prevent memory loss. And even one of the ones you talked about was with navigational skills that you can go on a walk and you can also work on your navigational skills, which is also good for your mind. You talk about curiosity, so there's so much in there. There was a spot and I don't know, I have so many notes here. Anabel I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to find it, but when you were talking about the simple mechanics of walking in the book, you say, actually it is very complex. It's one of the most complex things that happens in the world. So it is something that's helping our brain.
Annabel Abbs Yes.
Ginny Yurich All of that coordination, I think.
Annabel Abbs Are you thinking there's a bit where I talk about the fact that no robot, they have not been able to engineer a robot yet to do something as sophisticated as I was simple walking. But if you think even our feet, our feet contain hundreds of bones, muscles, joints and that tiny. But it's such an extraordinary piece of engineering. And again, we were designed to be walking on our feet as opposed to perhaps cycling. So the feet have been designed specifically and designed to walk on all sorts the different terrains and in all sorts of different weathers and to sort of move uphill and downhill and to go up on tiptoe so that we can create quite. I mean, the feet are mind blowingly extraordinary.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. Just skip to jump. You talk about that, to be able to to take that impact and shift it through the body. I mean, this is incredible. So the cognition, even just at one piece, would entice someone to walk more. But then you have so much about the physicality. And one of the things that you talk about in here that I've only recently started to hear about more is breathing through the nose and the nitric oxide. I actually didn't know anything about this. So can you tell us why is it important? And I've been thinking about it and I've been talking to other people about it now, too. Why is it important that we're aiming to breathe through our nose as we walk and just in general?
Annabel Abbs Yeah. So the nose also is absolutely extraordinary and we sort of forget about it because we're so we're so in thrall to vision. And the more time is spent on screens, the more we we become sort of, I guess, reliant on our eyes and the more our other senses sort of fade away. But the nose in each of our noses, they contain these extraordinary cells that take oxygen and convert it into nitric oxide. We can't do that in our throats. So every time we breathe through our mouths, not only are we taking in huge amounts of pollution because there's no filtration things, no filtration system in our throat, So we're walking along side traffic and we're breathing through our mouth. All that pollution is going straight into our lungs as we breathe through our nose. It goes through a filtration system, and some of it will some of it will be left up there, left up. That's not traveled across into our brain, but the cells that produce nitric oxide start working as soon as we breathe through our nose. And that nitric oxide is really good for our lungs and for our respiratory. How? And nitric oxide. What it does is it sort of shunts our blood cells first around our body. So you've got to think of nitric oxide as a like a little foot pump that attaches itself to a red blood cell and just gives it a little push. So again, it comes back to everything moving really smoothly and efficiently and beautifully all through our systems. So nitric oxide was investigated a lot during the pandemic when they discovered that people they created machines that sort of blew out nitric oxide. And those that were in hospital wards with nitric oxide machines were making much better and much quicker recoveries. Interesting. So some of the medics were saying, okay, during the pandemic, okay, guys, you've got to breathe. Stop breathing, too. You've got to breathe through your nose, which actually is in a lot of people now find it quite difficult to breathe through their nose. If you're talking, you can't breathe through your nose very easily. You tend to breathe through your mouth. And if you're doing anything that's physically tiring, you start to breathe through your mouth because you can breathe much, much more quickly. When you go through your mouth, when you breathe through your nose, you also break more slowly. So again, everything just sort of calms down, which is why nasal breathing is also really good for lowering levels of anxiety and stress. It just calms us.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. So when I've been out walking, I've really been trying to pay attention. This nitric oxide thing is so fascinating. It's produced. It starts, like you said, in the nasal cavity. And then you talk about humming. Humming is also a good way to produce. And I've never heard this in my life.
Annabel Abbs So when you when you have a Ginny, you produce 15 times more nitric oxide just from humming. So if you can walk with your mouth, your mouth closed, breathing through your nose and just humming and it's do you feel the harm? It's sort of down in the back of your throat here. That is really, really good for you, really good for your lungs, really good for your blood. A such a simple thing to do because no one need even know that you're humming. You can do it sort of privately. Quietly.
Ginny Yurich Mhm. Yeah. That's what you talk about with the singing which I love the, the chapter about singing, but maybe someone might feel a little embarrassed depending on where they're walking and so the humming can be a little bit more private.
Annabel Abbs That's right.
Ginny Yurich And then you also talk I mean you really talk about the senses here. You're talking about breathing through your nose, but you're also talking about smelling. I didn't know that our smell receptors get replaced frequently.
Annabel Abbs Every every 30 to 40 days. Yes. So so the interesting thing about smell is that it's like a muscle. And if you don't use it and concentrate on it and have a good sniff, you know, just throughout the day, you will forget how to smell. So things like cooking are brilliant because you are often you will pick up a piece of fruit, you'll just smell it to make sure it's fresh or it smells good. But also when you go out for a walk, really, you should be putting your nose into the neighbor's lavender or into the wild peppermint or just, you know, into the branches of a tree and just really spending a moment to breathe it in through your nose and to think about how it makes you feel. This is quite often you will notice within a second that you feel happier or more uplifted or a bit calmer or bit excited. It's a sense that, again, a lot of us forgotten how to how to use we should take a take a note from our dogs who are brilliant at smelling.
Ginny Yurich Well, let's talk about the dogs, because there was a chapter about walking with your dog and it was such an exciting chapter talking about how having a dog, having a companion enhances life. And and people know that. But you have all the science in there. People are living longer and living happier. So tell us about walking with the dog.
Annabel Abbs Yeah, absolutely right. Ginny, people, I think people know a lot of what I put in the book, actually, because, you know, people say, Oh, but I know it's nice to walk in the rain and I know it's lovely to have a dog. But what I've tried to do is to sort of explain why so that when when people are unsure, you know, they can they can turn to the signs. And the signs on dogs is again, really interesting. Now, people who live with a dog. I lived with one for 14 years. I haven't had one for the last two or three years. People didn't have more diverse microbiomes, so they have better gut bacteria, which as we know now is better for mental health, better for all sorts of intestinal issues. So just having just having a dog is really good for your gut. Stroking a dog. Once you start stroking your dog, your body produces, you know, the love hormone oxytocin. And oxytocin makes you feel both happy and calm. So just stroking your own dog, not necessarily other dogs, because that might you might feel slightly anxious if you don't know the dog by stroking your own dog. It's really, really good. And then, of course, the dog just gets you out walking. So dog walkers, dog walkers live longer and people aren't quite sure why that is, whether it's the the gut, you know, all those microbiota, is it the oxytocin or is it just the walking and the thing that dog walkers as they go out in all weathers. So unlike unlike a child, you just don't want to go out. It's raining a dog never doesn't want to go out. They always want to go out whether it's a sunny day or a wet day. So if you have a dog, you are often twice a day and often on a proper a proper 30, 40, 50 minute walk.
Ginny Yurich Right. And so you're out in the different weather, which is something that you talk about in the book, the negative ions. Well, so let's start there. I want to talk about the weather, but I also want to talk about the light that were exposed to because that's a big thing you talk about to the time of day. But let's start off with the weather because you're talking about the dog. Go get you out. Why do we want to get outside when it's wet?
Annabel Abbs Says the rain. The rain. Well, the rain does several things. First of all, it gets rid of all the pollution. So if you are living in a traffic area or you're in a city, a rainy day is the perfect time to walk. Fewer people on the pavements and and the pollution is all just washed away. But the other thing is for specific people, people who are, you know, out in the countryside, what the rain does when it comes down is it sort of batters all of the plants and the trees. And when they're getting battered and crushed by rain, they start producing these fighting sites, which they produce really to protect themselves. So if you think if you think about something coming down and knocking your skin, perhaps opening it, you're suddenly more vulnerable to germs and disease and the same as applies to plants. So after a downpour, they will start to produce all these chemicals that oddly perhaps make us feel really happy. So the just the smell, the smell of soil after it's been completely forgotten by rain, the smell of trees and plants, they'll be producing all sorts of different, different fights on sides and different fights on sites will have different effects on us. So they're good for memory, they're good for immunity, they're good for respiration, they're good for mood. They lift us up. They even Alzheimer's. We feel calmer. They lower our blood pressure. It's quite extraordinary. But again, you need to be sort of out there and you must be like breathing, breathing through your nose more slowly, taking it all in and sometimes just even touching, because these extraordinary particularly with the with the some of the bacteria, you can breathe in through your nose, but you can also if you just touch a tree, sort of it's not poisonous plant, but most tree transplant poisons just just touch it. So you're just engaging with nature in a in a more physical a physical way as well. Get it getting it on your skin and the same at the rain is sort of on your skin and yeah, it's the science is extraordinary and most scientists still don't really understand why this is happening. But as time goes by, they're starting to understand a little bit more about some of the chemicals that these plants are producing that are also doing incredible things for our own our own health.
Ginny Yurich I mean, it's just enticing. Get out in the rain. You can read the book and you think we in the past you might thought, oh, the rainy day is for me to stay inside and oh, this is prime time to get outside into the rain and to smell, which goes back to the nasal cavity thing that you smell these different smells. So. That's what the book does. It excites you to get out. Then you also talk about the cold. So I just was telling someone yesterday we were at a little League baseball game. So it's, you know, it's height of the summer and we went to our friend's baseball game. He's 13 years old and it was a nighttime game and it was 830 at night. And then it went into overtime. And so we were actually out until midnight. His game went until midnight under the big lights. It was so fun, but it was getting colder. We're in Michigan and it's just not all that warm. And so it was hitting 63, 62, 61. So then I started talking about the brown fat. I guess I had just read about it in your book. No. So that would be another inclement weather situation where people might say, you know, I'm going to stay cooped up in the winter in the cold months, but why is it good for us to take an exhilarating walk when it's cold?
Annabel Abbs Well, brown fat brown fat is a horrible term for the most part, but one of the most powerful things you can think of. So when a baby is born, a newborn baby of newborn baby is covered in brown fat, and brown fat is just full of mitochondria. It's just energy. And the reason for that in terms of evolution is that if the mother had then died, the baby had enough brown fat to stay alive. So. So brown fat keeps us alive. Another thing that brown fat does as you get older with a baby, as you get older, is brown fat actually gobbles up white fat. So if you think of white fat, white fat is the artery clogging fat that causes heart disease and heart attacks. Brown fat eats it up. So we want as much brown fat as we can get. As we get older, we we have less and less brown fat. But all of us, even into old age, keep a nice little store of brown fat just around. And I'm fiddling, holding, pointing now to my collarbones by the base of your neck where your collarbones are. Although this feels quite so, it doesn't necessarily feel a particularly fatty place. That is where we store our brown fat. So in order to really benefits from the brown fat and to get the brown fat, brown fat sort of moves into action as soon as it's cold. So the body experiences some cold, it will stop producing the brown fat and the brown fat will gobble up the white fat. It's a very simplistic way of looking at it, but what you need to do when you're out is to keep just for the first, maybe 10 minutes of your walk is to keep your scarf unwound and the top of your coat just open said that your collarbones are just exposed to cold for a little bit because that's just too cold will spur your brown fat. Caffeine also spurs brown fat, so you can hold a hot cup of coffee in your hand while your neck is exposed. And that will start to get rid of the really the really dangerous fat, the fact that is going to possibly clog up your arteries. So so brown fat, think of it as think of it as it's magic, really. And the more you can get, the better. And so Cold swim will do the same. People who swim regularly in cold water have really good stores of brown fat people who are getting out in the cold and either running or walking will have good stores of brown fat. And the more brown fat you have really, the longer you'll live. So we all we all want to get we all want the brown fat, but they really need to give it a nicer name, doesn't they?
Ginny Yurich Do They do is fascinating. And what it does is it actually makes you.
Annabel Abbs Hopeful.
Ginny Yurich For the more inclement weather days, like, oh, I'm so excited it's going to be a rainy day or I'm so excited that I'm out in this little bit of colder temperature as opposed to feeling like it's drudgery. And you write in here that 2 hours of exposure to moderate cold, which moderate cold doesn't even have to be crazy cold, but moderate cold triggers the white fat to turn into brown fat. So, yeah, this is incredible things happening when we're out in the weather that a lot of people consider to be bad weather. Yes, it's actually great for us.
Annabel Abbs Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think I think it just goes back to what we were saying earlier. Geneva, our bodies are designed they're designed to be outside in all weathers at all times of the day and night, really up to a point. And, you know, every time our body faces a little tiny bit of stress, whether that's cold or hunger, you know, it responds immediately by saying, okay, this person looks like they're about to die. We've got to kick into action and all of your cells will suddenly do this sort of spring clean. So a lot of the things that, you know, goes back to the whole place. What doesn't kill you makes you makes you stronger. So some of the things that I think in the past we've used as excuses to stay home and, you know, watch Netflix are in fact the very reasons to get outside.
Ginny Yurich I love that this book. I just I mean, I loved it so much. I couldn't put it down. Mouth dropping it in. You know, we've been getting outside for the past decade, so it's. Too rare for me because I do read a lot to come across books where I had never heard that before. And in your book, it was being after thing after thing and things that are so exciting. I just loved it so much in the family that came up and told me about your book. They said that they have been walking through their neighborhood, walking backwards. They had been skipping. They have been jumping. So I was intrigued from the get go and intrigued all the way through. It's just such a great read. 52 Ways to Walk. It came out this year. So it's a new when people can definitely check that out. You're talking about the dogs or you're talking about maybe if you have backyard chickens or if you have a garden and those type of things get you up and they get you out in the morning. And we found during COVID, we tried to get out during the morning because my midwife had talked about it, but I didn't understand the science of it, that it will help you sleep better at night and it will just help you throughout the day. And so you talk about light and the importance of light and how when we get out and walk, especially in the morning, that is going to enhance our life. So can you tell us why?
Annabel Abbs Yeah. So the first rule, I guess I call it a rule is to try and get out within one hour of waking up. So if you can get out, assuming it's light out there. So if you can get outside fairly soon after you've woken up, several things happen which we're not really aware of. But now scientists are starting to understand what happens and why. But the first thing is the light. The light switches off our melatonin. So the melatonin is a hormone that helps us sleep, and it's sort of trickling through our bodies during the night. And as soon as our brain sees light, it knows to switch off the melatonin, so it knows to wake up. So that's the first thing, very, very basic. The second thing is that the light that we have in the light, the colors of the light change across the day and morning light has a lot of blue in it. And this blue is really important. It does several things. First of all, it raises our cortisol. Now we think of cortisol as being a stress hormone, but cortisol is also the hormone that energizes us and gives us a nice surge of get up and go in the morning. So that blue light is also saying to us, okay, get busy, get going, get energized. The blue and the light also raises our levels of the happy hormone, as it's sometimes called, serotonin. So as well as having the energy hormone, we've also got the happy hormone. So the brighter the light, the greater the sunshine, the more serotonin we produce, we produce it when it falls on our skin. So it's another reason, really, when you're outside, if it's warm enough, is to roll up your sleeves for a bit, the light can get directly to your skin and don't put on unless it's really, really hot and bright. Don't put on the sun shine straight away. And the other thing is, don't wear your sunglasses for that first ten, 15 minutes unless unless it's so dazzling you can't see because the light is coming through your eyes and you've got this layer of cells at the back of your eyes that then take the message straight to your brain. Now, if you're wearing sunglasses, those cells in the back of your eyes, they don't see the blue in the light. They they see what a tinge of sunglasses and they see why a shade or warm shade, which is more of an afternoon color. So. So go out first within an hour of waking. Don't wear your sunglasses. Roll your sleeves up if it's cold, have your scarf on wound and your neck exposed. And that really is how you will get off to a fantastic social day. Because the other thing that happens when your brain registers that early morning light is it sets the clock. So it sets its little body clock in the brain for the whole day. So it'll send the message to the brain, to the melatonin, A saying, right, you're you're on standby, you're on standby for 15, 16 hours. But then you're you're it's your turn to come back on. So it's like a very clever little alarm system, which is forward setting the melatonin. So come 10:00 at night, the melatonin or even before that, the melatonin will turn on and start to rest, get you rested and calm for sleep. So it is another extraordinarily intricate piece of engineering that we keep in our brain. And it's and it's all about light. So I think the sad thing, of course, is a lot of people can't do that. So I would always say if you drive to work, you know, try and drive maybe half way or try and drive not all the way and then get out and walk for a bit. If you're working from home, don't just fall out of bed and roll straight to your laptop. You know, make sure that you you get outside before breakfast. Even better, get outside straight away and get that light. I get that exercise as well. Get that that movement and try and get some time walk in nature if you can spend some time in London. But I will always every morning make sure that my walk goes past the river through some trees. It's just the greenery and the blue space and the green space are really, really important. Just just so that when you start. Your day. You are you know, you are calm, you are energized, you are sort of, you know, properly ready to go, if that makes sense.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, it does. We purchased a light meter, which probably someone could even get an app on their phone.
Annabel Abbs It's an app.
Ginny Yurich Photographers use them, so photographers use light meters. So it's a product that someone could purchase. And we were curious about it. And your indoor light is hitting at about 500. 600. It's measured in terms of Candle Lux, 500, 600. But as soon as you step outside and we live in an area where it's cloudy a good portion of the year, but even when you step outside on a cloudy day, you're jumping into the thousand, maybe even 8000. So we really saw the vast difference between the indoor light and the outdoor light. And I love what you said and about the colors, the spectrum, it changes throughout the day and is meant to guide our bodies. So it's just more inspiration to get outside. And you went further. You talked about how if people walk in the morning, that helps with appetite suppression.
Annabel Abbs No, it does. I must say that fact I found absolutely extraordinary that if you are out in early morning light and again, moving, not sunbathing, but moving in light, you will eat less throughout the whole of the day to come. So, again, no one really understands why this happens, but it's shown itself in so many studies now that, you know, people it's just sort of accepted knowledge amongst the sports science community that getting outside in the morning will suppress your appetite, but in a good way. It doesn't suppress your appetite so much as stop you overeating. Right. And again, we don't know why, but it's something to do with some cascade of chemicals that says, okay, you know, we're good, we're happy we come. We don't need to go and look in the fridge because where we're anxious or unhappy or we're bored because you just started from an even keel.
Ginny Yurich What an interesting set of information for a parent, you know, who doesn't want a happy child in the morning and a child that's sleepy at night. This is what we're aiming for. And I think culturally so often it's get your work done before you play. And it's counterintuitive. It doesn't come naturally to start the day with a walk, but your book catalogs thing after thing after thing that if you can consistently get out and walk in the morning, it doesn't have to be extremely long, but it will do wonders for your health and for your life and even the birdsong. So this is a completely different subject. But the birdsong travels further in the morning. And so let's talk about our hearing that this is doing stuff for our moods as well.
Annabel Abbs Yes, yes, yes. So birds, I think I think the data that I found was that birdsong carries I think it carries 20 times further early in the morning just because there's just less noise around. So it's not necessarily the birds are singing more loudly, although actually often they are, But it's also that everywhere is quieter. So you hear the birdsong and studies of birdsong. A really interesting because they show whether the two there are two sounds to listen for when you're out and about. The sound that we find we humans find most relaxing is the sound of water now, not big crashing waves, which we could find a bit frightening, but just water trickling, water flowing, water waves on a beach that we find really soothing. But the sounds that we find most uplifting that makes us happiest is actually birdsong. So you want to be I mean, ideally, you want to be hearing some water to keep you calm and so. Birdsong to make you happy. But that's not always possible. But birds, even in cities, you can hear if you go out 7 a.m., 6 a.m. earlier, you will hear plenty of birdsong. And it always, always makes me feel happier with you.
Ginny Yurich And it said that it could last for 4 hours. So if you went out and did a morning walk at seven or eight in the morning, that's going to last your whole morning. So it is a really exciting things in this book about the simple I mean, these are simple things, but they're so life changing. That's what I love. I love simple things that can radically change your life because it's hard to implement complicated things. But this is the simple. Let's talk about walking backwards, because that's what this one person told me about. And I did it. I just did it yesterday. I was like, I'm just I feel a little weird. I'm just going to turn around for a little bit and walk backwards. What does that do for us?
Annabel Abbs Well, walking backwards uses completely different muscles, oddly enough. So if you think about when we walk forward, we typically land on our heel and we roll through the ball of our foot. But as you well know, you try to when you walk backwards, you land on the ball of your foot and you roll backwards through your heels. So your muscles and bones working in a completely different way. And that goes that the muscles all the way up your legs as well, right up to your glutes. So it's a completely. Chain of muscles. So for a complete set of leg workout, you should really do a bit of both. But the back was walking has also been shown to activate parts of our memory. So sometimes when my kids had exams and they couldn't remember things, I would say to them, Let's just go out and try a bit of backwards walking. And we would. They were too shy to do it on the street, obviously, so we would just do it in the garden. You only need a you don't need a huge space, but you do need to have a space that hasn't got, I don't know, ponds or big rocks in because otherwise you spend your whole time turning over. So so it does seem to do things to the brain as well as to as to the right muscles. Interesting. But we found we just found it quite fun. We would do it for bed and we would just laugh. Yeah, it is fun. I'm not so I'm not sure what if I remembered things more clearly. But again, studies have shown that walking backwards, people are able to retrieve memories that they couldn't when they were walking forwards. And psychologists think this is something to do with when we go back, we go backwards. We travel backward psychologically through our memories. And so they think that when we walk backwards, that same backwards motion somehow, somehow activates our hippocampus, our store of memories faster. Again, it's one of those things we don't quite understand how, but it does seem it does seem to work.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. And I would have never considered as an adult. What was interesting to me is that all of our kids have gone through a phase where they have wanted to walk backwards, all of them, and it turns out maybe they were three or four and they just got the biggest kick out of learning how to walk backwards. And you talk in there about how it helps develop the proprioception sense, which is a sense that I didn't learn about until well into being a parent. And so it was really interesting to think about, Well, yeah, little kids do it when they're three or four or five because their bodies are developing that proprioception sense so that it's a foundation for further growth. But as we get older, I imagine that is extremely important for our balance in general that taking some time to walk backwards would help us to not fall as much, to maybe be a little less clumsy and to keep that sense heightened. And that's an easy thing to do to it. It it changes the whole thing. Even if you just did it for a couple of minutes, a change, you're like, Oh, I'm doing something different.
Annabel Abbs And I see. It just reminded me of another series of studies that I looked at when I was writing that chapter, and they were studies on children, actually children, children who find it hard to concentrate. And they found that after they had more of the kids to move backwards. And it wasn't for very long, for a few minutes, something about that moving through space and having to really concentrate, because when you walk forwards, you don't have to think about it automatically. When you walk backwards, you really have to think about where you're putting your foot and how your body is moving. And that seems to encourage these fidgety kids. Then when they sat down afterwards to do some reading or some some quiet study and they were much better able to concentrate and they could concentrate for longer. And that seemed to have been triggered by the effort of thinking about walking backwards. It seemed to it seemed to pull into place a level of attention that hadn't been there before. And I thought that was that was really interesting. Some of my children were very fidgety, very minuti, and I wish I'd known about backward backwards walking then, you know.
Ginny Yurich I mean, I cannot recommend this book more highly. Who would have that about walking backwards? And you even talk about how for people that have lower back pain and there are a lot of people that have lower back pain, they're adding this into your routine in a short period of time. Might really help with your lower back pain.
Annabel Abbs Yeah, and that's interesting because when we walk backwards and again, you'll notice that when you did it, Ginny, let me walk backwards. Our posture is different. So spine, we have to hold our spine differently so that a tendency for our lower spine to slump, which of course it does. Every time you sit in a chair that goes, we have to hold up our lower spine. So we seem to be strengthening those core muscles when we walk backwards in a way that we don't when we walk forwards. It's it's very strange, isn't it?
Ginny Yurich Yes. This is just one of the 52 chapters. If you're looking for cool ideas and things, to shake it up a little bit and to add different health components to your life, this is one chapter Walk backwards. One of 52. There could have been 54, but there's 52. Well, I never did do Walk backwards, but one of the chapters that was really encouraging to me was about the 12 minute walk. And I was just talking to someone recently who does a 12 minute rule. She says, I try and do something for 12 minutes. It kind of gets me into it. And then a lot of times when you hit that 12 minute mark, then you're going to continue. But even if you just had time for a 12 minute walk, that is going to dramatically impact your health. So can you talk about how could that be 12 minutes?
Annabel Abbs Well, in this study, which I think was done, I think it was done in the Massachusetts General Hospital, I think they chose 12 minutes. So a more recent study, I think, has suggested that it could be as little as 10 minutes. I quite like 12 minutes because I said I just like the idea of 12 minutes. I like it. The study found that it took 12 minutes for that number, which I think is I think it is 500 to I think 500 tablets to completely change.
Ginny Yurich Number.
Annabel Abbs And literally start. So that means that what that means is that these proteins are literally sort of shapeshifting and starting to have to change their shape and change their capabilities, if you like, to be able to do things they couldn't do 12 minutes before. So for me, 12 minutes is just a very nice number because almost anyone can find 12 minutes. Even the busiest person can find 12 minutes to step out of their house and walk in that one. The walk was quite it was a brisk walk. So that's a 5 to 12 minute fast walk as opposed to a slow walk.
Ginny Yurich And you do talk about that throughout the book are pace and you talk about the benefits of a slower pace and the benefits of a quicker pace. And just even within the aging process, some important pieces of information that made me think I want to try and make sure that I can keep a quicker pace for as long as I can, but that also there are benefits of slower walks as well. So it was really nice to have that balance there. And then you talk about when we walk rocking, which this is something that I hadn't heard of until pretty recently, and it helps with your bone structure. It helps with this the strength of your skeletal system. But you say we're meant to walk and carry and so to backpack, it feels good. So we're wrapping up here a little bit, but let's end with that one about walking and carrying. Why should we try and incorporate that into our lives?
Annabel Abbs Well, again, we were built to walk and to carry. So if you think about a nomadic ancestors, they would have been carrying babies and children and often everything they owned as they went from, you know, wherever cave to cave, they would have been carrying dead animals that they had killed. They would have been carrying all their bedding. So, again, we are we are actually incredibly muscular creatures, all of us, men and women. And so this need to carry is still sort of really deeply embedded in our DNA. And after I'd researched Rucking with in the UK, we call it tapping, and people who do backpacking will just call it backpacking. But at the time one of my daughters had a boyfriend who was in the army and he was in charge of Rucking. So he told me all about rocking and I got so excited about Rucking and what it does for your body and your mind that I decided that from now on I was going to do my supermarket shopping. And so when I go shopping, I take a backpack. Wow. And I've got four kids. So I was quite large shopping for fork, as you well know, before it's cold or something. But I would take a backpack and I would take two bags and I would try and I'm close enough to a supermarket. It's only half an hour. But I would walk there and then walk back with everything on my back and two bags. And I probably did look slightly strange, but I did. I didn't really mind what I looked like because I thought, This is really good for me when you've got a backpack on. For example, one of the things that happens, whether it's full of food or, you know, tent and pillow, is that it opens up your chest. So you walk with much better posture without even thinking about it. And when your chest is open, you can breathe more fully and breathe more slowly and breathe more deeply. So I just really liked the way that I was breathing with a backpack on. And of course, carrying all that weight meant I was having a complete upper body workout without having to go to the gym or lift any weight. So, you know, it was all there. I got home, I'd done the shopping bill, the fridge. I had my aerobic exercise, I had my weight lifting, and I just felt good. I think there's a sense that, you know, rocking and tapping are just for the military or just for men. I say, No, they're not. Anyone can actually, even if you're just doing a grocery shop instead of getting I think, hey, I'll just put it on the car. Even if you're just walking, perhaps you park right at the end of the car park, load your things into your backpack and carry it back to your car at the end of the car park. Then at least you've got a bit of that sort of you've had a have a taste of a taste of rocking.
Ginny Yurich Mm. And even talked about it with your picnic. Bring a picnic. It was an additional benefit of picnicking because you have to carry the food, you.
Annabel Abbs Have to carry.
Ginny Yurich The food. And I loved that, that, that was woven in there. What a simple thing. Take a picnic. Don't come back. Take your picnic with you. Carry it. Have the kids help carry it. And there's so many benefits. You wrote. Walking 3 to 4 Miles is the perfect piece for preserving bone density in the elderly. And so as you're walking, it's really helping with our bone structures. I just read this book Wide Eyed and about. I couldn't put it down. So like I said, I have notes and circles and with stars and my mouth dropped and it was just fascinating to me. And I think it's one of those books that's life. Changing because you can always come back to it and remind yourself that simple things can make a drastic difference in your life and try and find those simple things. Try the. Try these different ideas. Try to sing. Try to hum while you walk. Add in a couple of minutes of backward walking. Get outside in the morning. Remember that those colors change throughout the day so you can get outside in the evening too. That the color spectrum changes and helps to prepare your body for rest. And so it is a fantastic book. 52 Ways to Walk came out this year. The Surprising Science of Walking for Wellness. Enjoy One Week at a time available wherever you buy your books. Could you tell us briefly about the other books that you have?
Annabel Abbs Yes, I have a book called Wind Swept, which is a sort of part memoir. Again, it's about walking is about women who walked in the past in order to find their own voice, really. So these are women in the 19, 1920s, thirties, forties. WALKER Yeah, doing dong They're doing long distance walks out in the countryside. So I was looking at how their walks changed them.
Ginny Yurich I can't wait to read that one. The subtitle is Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women. So that's on my next list. I can't wait to read Windswept.
Annabel Abbs Yes. And then I've got a health book called The Trail Project. I'm not sure if that's available in the States, which is about how little again, it's all about little things we can do to help us age. Well, as we move through our forties, fifties and onwards. And then I've got three novels. One is called The Joyce Girl. One is called Frida, and one is called Miss Eliza's English Kitchen. So they are they're all quite different. And I feel like I've missed a book, but I don't think I know those.
Ginny Yurich Are all those are all.
Annabel Abbs The book.
Ginny Yurich Yes. It's really a special thing when you find an author that you love and then they have more. So this is exciting for me. I am moving on to Windswept, but I love reading novels too, so this is really exciting. And the books that you have written are changing. Lives have been translated into more than 20 languages. So if people want to find you, they can find you at about ABC.com. Also the age well project dot com and at Annabel Abbs on Instagram and then it's backwards on Facebook and Annabel and I'll make sure that I'll write all those things so that people can find you about this book. 52 Ways to Walk. I'm so glad someone told me about it and they told me about it in a way that I knew I wanted to read it because they were so excited about it and I could just picture them. Happened through I mean, we didn't even talk about the jumping and the impact on your bones and but they talked about jumping through their neighborhood and they were so thrilled about it. And then, like I said, I got so much feedback when I posted that one quote. So I know this is a great book for people to read at any time of the year to change their life. So I really appreciate your time. Annabel We always end our podcast with the same question. The question is what is a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside?
Annabel Abbs Well, I grew up on the coast of Wales and as I said, we had no car. We walked everywhere. But what has really stayed with me is swimming every single day in the gray sea in the Atlantic Ocean. Every single day my father would take me and my brother and sister and it didn't matter what the weather was and we weren't allowed to complain. We just all went. And sometimes just for a minute or two, we went and had a dip and out we came. And I will never forget those wild Welsh swims.
Ginny Yurich Wow. Wow. Well, Annabel, thank you for your time. Thank you for your beautiful, inspiring writing. I am so glad that we've connected. And I know that everyone is just going to really enjoy this episode.
Annabel Abbs Oh, thank you so much for inviting me. I love chatting with you. It's been great. Thank you.
