Every body part wants in on this study.
A walker might help as slowness is sometimes due to fear of falling.
My mother used a wheeled walker with hand brakes for several years before we switched her to the no-wheel kind.
> Not only does walking speed typically decrease with age, greater levels of hearing loss are linked with slower walking speed for adults of all ages.
Why is it every time there's a study posted to HN, someone feels the need to go in and say, "Have the researchers thought of $incredibly_obvious_thing?"
i have quite long legs and i outpace by a far cry everyone when i'm walking around the city without my earbuds or when i'm hiking
(from "younger next year")
Strength training and controlled cardio is much better for continuous health.
> Key Points
> - Improvements in joint position sense can be attained via standard strength-training exercises.
> - Performing resistance exercises at consistent intensity rather than varying intensity resulted in better proprioception performance.
Systemic and muscular vitality is optimized when you get cardio, resistance, and bounding/dynamic movement. Heart, slow twitch, and fast twitch.
Ordinary running doesn't do that, though there is a practice called "fartlek" (literally, speed-play) where you do random bursts of speed. It used to be considered excellent cross training, though I haven't heard the term in a while. (Perhaps because the name is unintentionally hilarious.)
Oxidative stress is my unrelenting hunch.
(Frankly, it is ridiculous to me that doctors go around saying that fixing your hearing will free up your brain will fix your life. Fix the thing that's dragging down an expensive system that's wired straight into the sensorium and yep, you'll fix your other expensive systems like the brain.)
I can appreciate things better by moving slowly, with more intention, conserving my concentration and energy for matters of substance.
Why must moving slowly be stigmatised?
I am surrounded by people talking at such a high rate, they start responding before the other person's sentence or thought is completely expressed.
My value at work has become disentangling messes made by people failing to communicate effectively, and the first step in addressing that problem is always, slow down.
You will not get 10% further in life by going 10% faster. People moving quickly, failed at planning. The entire mystery of the universe is accessible to you in your current location.
I feel like even if I covered the same distance (or longer) walking quickly, it wouldn't be nearly as painful.
Yoga was very helpful--it taught me to use my muscles to carry my body rather than letting myself sink into my joints.
There will exist people moving quickly who have failed to plan, but a lot also incorporate moving quickly as part of their plan, simply because that's how they prefer doing things.
It's true that this kind of planning is vulnerable to unexpected problems - a missed connection, a queue, whatever it might be - but over time it can still work out rational if you accept this risk and just want to spend less of your time in aggregate in transit, with spells of over-provisioned waiting time, or just prefer the experience of moving quickly (there is much said about the benefits of slowing down, less said about the equally valid disposition of finding flow in the act of moving quickly, which many people also experience).
The exercise was 2 parts. First, you put away your mat slowly. Second, you put it away quickly.
I immediately thought, oh wow this is interesting. We've spent all day on slow stuff, but now the curriculum has varied to show us that speed can also work when required. I began to think there was more depth to the workshop than I originally thought.
But she ended the exercise as soon as we did the 2nd part, and she clearly didnt like the exercise.
I don't personally believe that everything is better done slowly. A lot is, but there's no reason to banish speed.
Physical movement can be joy. Dancing, running with children, playing sports with friends, and even just taking care of errands like cleaning so we can get on to enjoying our spaces with our friends and family are all benefits from being able to move and react faster. And I imagine any number of things will slow me down as I age, so I’ll take a +10% wherever I can get it!
When I read at home, I fall asleep in 2 pages. I have to be moving around. I have a bunch of "flashcard" like stuff on my kindle related to coding, interview prep, etc. The only chance I have is doing this while walking.
Because some of us have jobs to get to, trains to catch, appointments to make, airplane gates to queue at, and just generally need to get-things-done!
All for slowness, but not amongst pedestrians.
If you're quicker you can do more. I didn't have time to read the rest of your comment.
Because, irrespective of your individual case, slowing down correlates strongly with ageing and diminished faculties.
I'm really not sure what that means.
In any case, you think what I posted is "peak HN", seemingly as a derogative comment. Then, you say I did it "in response to a claim that slowing down is associated with aging and diminished capacity", without noticing that said claim had been done in response to a person saying they intentionally slowed down.
Not due to diminished capacity. Not due to aging. With thoughtful intent.
Then asked why slowing down must be stigmatised, and GGP answered with this correlation, which clearly doesn't track in this case. Is that not a spurious correlation? And one that leads to preconceptions and stigma nonetheless.
Why does the fact that a all people slow down with age mean we must stigmatise slowing down?
What other conditions that correlate with old age must we stigmatise?
I am old enough to know they aren't. That doesn't mean I don't like walking fast if situation allows, but thats part of my continuous training, injury recovery, or active rest.
This is typical of people with ADHD. It also drives me up the wall :)
So we have to distinguish between walking slowly deliberately vs because one has trouble walking faster.
> So why does walking speed even matter? It’s considered an important indicator of overall health. A hale and hearty speed signifies that your body’s systems—including your heart, lungs, muscles and nervous system—are working well together. “We call it the sixth vital sign”