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Tag Archives: walking
On step counts towards health and wellness
I’m sharing here an article about step counts. I guess the jury is still out there so to speak when it comes to the number of steps per day. The key is really to be active rather than just sit or lie down for most of the day. And there are many ways to be active and be able to measure it so you can monitor your movement.
Loudin, A. (February 28, 2025) “Why step count remains the most impactful fitness stat,” WebMD, https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20250228/why-step-count-remains-most-impactful-fitness-stat [Last accessed: 4/14/2025]
To quote from the article:
“For decades, the goal was 10,000 steps a day — but further research has shown that step counts as low as 2,500 still deliver long-term health benefits that increase as your step count rises — even past 10,000. The bottom line, however, is that more movement is better for you and serves as the best measurement of longevity.”
You can walk to start your day. You can walk in the middle of the day (say lunch time). And you can walk after dinner. And that’s just walking. Of course, you prefer to jog, run or bike, even swim, then that should do it for you in terms of being active. Walking though is really for most people who are physically able. And you can do it outdoors or indoors (yes, even in a building). So that’s where you should start in terms being more active towards health and welnness.
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On walkable spaces for senior citizens
Here is a quick share of an article on walking and walkability, and the relation with dementia:
Steuteville, R. (March 10, 2025) “Living in a walkable place reduces dementia,” , https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2025/03/10/living-walkable-place-reduces-dementia [Last accessed: 3/29/2025]
To quote from the article:
“When we live in a walkable place, we move more, naturally. Unsurprisingly, exercise is linked to better cognitive health. Regular exercise increases memory, and boosts hippocampal volume by 2 percent.
Also, walkable neighborhoods are more stimulating. They are built on connected street networks, which give individuals more choices on how to get around and reward those choices with diverse physical paths linked to spatial memories. And they are mixed-use.
“Street layouts with better connectivity and walkability are associated with a reduced risk of cognitive impairment. Access to local amenities, such as food stores, community centers, and healthcare amenities, supports cognitive health,” the authors note.
Social connections also probably help. When you walk to a destination, you are more likely to have friendly interactions, which have been shown to reduce the risk of depression, and walkable places also boost the sense of community.”
As there are many senior citizens in our village, the topic is quite relevant. Most seniors probably won’t take a walk if they felt it was dangerous or risky even inside residential subdivisions. In our neighborhood, there are a few of them going around using their motorcycles or scooters. Most I see walking around perhaps for exercise or leisure rather than to go to a store or restaurant in the area. But increased traffic due to customers of restaurants that sprouted around the village has increased the risk for those who walk. Hopefully, the induced motor vehicle traffic generated by these establishments can be managed and regulated for the overall welfare of residents.
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Tips for walking
I was at a clinic last week and found this special edition of a certain magazine that had meditation and mindfulness as the main themes. Walking was a topic of one article in the magazine and I got the following “tips” for walking:
- Walk when you wake up
- Walk to get lost
- Walk in the cold
- Walk in silence
- Walk after you eat
I will leave these tips as is for now and won’t be expounding on these. I will try to write about each in future posts. The reader is free to interpret or identify with these tips. I’m sure that many people will have experiences with at least one of the tips.
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Happy New Year 2025!
Before I start writing again about transportation, traffic and related topics, I just want to greet everyone a Happy New Year!
My walking route includes a street where one of the houses has this starburst plant. I always think of this as nature’s version of showing fireworks that don’t actually involve fire.
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How the Built Environment Affects Your Mood
Here’s a nice read as we do our storm watch, and probably explains why when we reminisce about college or university as “the best years of our lives”.
Source: How the Built Environment Affects Your Mood
To quote from the article:
“It is not for nothing that older adults often regard college as “the best years of your life” because in some cases it truly is. College years serve as a gateway drug to all the amenities and benefits of urban-core living — until you graduate that is. Then you have to return to your parents’ suburban home (as many Americans do) and suddenly all the amenities you had disappear. Your newfound college friends might make up for the lack of a diverse built environment. Nope, they all have moved back to their sprawling neighborhoods too, probably dozens of miles if not hundreds of miles away from your town. You might get a new car to celebrate your graduation and your new 9 to 5 corporate job. Work will keep you busy! But you know what else? Driving. No more waking up 10 minutes before class and arriving just on time. You might now have to wake up a few hours early to drive to your job through rush hour morning traffic, and do it all again in the afternoon.
You might also gain weight — not because you are eating more, but because you are walking less. Various studies demonstrate the link between car usage and obesity, showing “greater levels of obesity in communities where the private automobile is the dominant means of transportation.” And let’s not forget that obesity leads to other health issues such as diabetes and hypertension, among others. Mental health conditions such as depression are more prevalent in adults with obesity. Hence once college ends, graduates stop socializing, stop enjoying public amenities every day, start driving everywhere, stop walking and hence gain a little more weight in the process. Then it is no surprise that young graduates feel unfulfilled, and sometimes even depressed after college — for them, it feels they were robbed of an integral part of their new lives.
Our surroundings impact our mental and physical health. Living in neighborhoods with negative qualities can increase the risk of mental health conditions such as depression. At the same time, the pandemic made us appreciate diversity in our lives and what happens when we are deprived of it. Walkable cities are not “just a preference”; they develop happiness by fostering community trust, promoting physical activity, and offering nearby amenities. As learned, these spaces encourage healthy behaviors, reduce car dependency, and create opportunities for social interaction — all things that are crucial for our well-being.”
Based on this, no wonder I love to stay at the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman. I’m sure my colleagues in UP Los Banos feel similarly.
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Pedestrian-Friendly Cities: The Impact of Walkability Grants
Here is a quick share of an article on how to encourage cities to be more pedestrian-friendly:
Source: Pedestrian-Friendly Cities: The Impact of Walkability Grants
Many of our cities, particularly the highly urbanized ones, are not as walkable as we want them to be. Lacking are the most basic facilities such as sidewalks and safe crossings. Walkability Grants such as those in the US can encourage cities to build and/or enhance pedestrian infrastructure. Many designs such as those footbridges along EDSA and Commonwealth Avenue, for example, are anti-walking. Grants may be used to come up with better designs for walkways and footbridges.
To quote from the article:
“Walkability grants are awards for programs and projects creating innovative pedestrian infrastructure, such as new sidewalks, crosswalks, plazas, street lights and green spaces. For example, in February 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration announced the Safe Streets and Roads for All Grant Program, delivering $800 million in monetary awards for 511 projects addressing public safety and road improvements…
Reshaping the built environment into a walkable haven helps boost the local economy and sustainability. By changing the urban landscape, citizens are more inclined to walk instead of drive, allowing cities to reduce emissions, improve air quality and create healthier neighborhoods. This is critical, considering air pollution is responsible for 7 million early deaths yearly.”
Perhaps we can have similar grants coming from national government via the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) in cooperation with the Department of Transportation (DOTr) and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH)? There was some funding for bikeways during the pandemic but this new one should put more emphasis on walkability.
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International Shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage
It’s Maundy Thursday today and there will be the Alay Lakad later this afternoon. Here are photos I took yesterday morning at the shrine including the road closures sign or tarp posted at the intersection of P. Oliveros Street, Ortigas Avenue Extension and L. Sumulong Circle near the provincial capitol site.
Access was already being limited as of yesterday morning. On regular days, there will be a queue of vehicles mostly new and to be blessed at the shrine. There’s limited parking at the shrine itself so visitors or pilgrims would have to find parking around the church including the nearby mall.
View of the shrine from the entrance to the complex
The main altar of the shrine
Retablo to Our Lady of Guadalupe
The main road to the shrine, P. Oliveros Street, is an extension of Ortigas Avenue Extension from the Provincial Capitol site. This will be the main route to the shrine and will be filled with people later this afternoon and overnight.
Road closures from 6:00 PM today until 6:00 AM tomorrow (Good Friday)
The Alay Lakad is a spectacle by itself and probably rivals if not exceeds the Traslacion of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo, Manila in terms of the number of participants.
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On the Pasig River esplanade project
My news feed was full of articles on the Pasig River esplanade, or at least the recently completed section at the Manila Central Post Office building. This is a proof of concept type of project that hopes to be expanded or extended to cover both sides of the river much like the Iloilo River Esplanade project. If you are wondering what the section looked like before the project, here are two posts I wrote in 2012 that features a lot of photos of the Muelle del Rio:
These were way before the fire that damaged the Post Office building. However, even at that time, there were already calls for the renovation, even repurposing of the Post Office building. Such projects or proposal draw inspiration from Singapore where old buildings have been preserved and many repurposed (e.g., how about the Post Office building transformed into a hotel?). Perhaps such will breathe life and lead to a revival of this part of Manila?
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29th Annual Conference of the TSSP
The Transportation Science Society of the Philippines (TSSP) held its 29th Annual Conference today, December 7, 2023. Following is the program for the conference, which featured a panel discussion in the morning and technical sessions in the afternoon.
This was the first mainly face-to-face or in-person conference for the society since 2019. Previously, the conferences were online. As reported in the concluding part of the program, there were 84 participants who showed up at the venue while there were 30+ participants who were online via Zoom.
There were a couple of awards at the conference. These were the Best Paper Award and the Best Presentation Award. The Best Paper Award, based on the scores garnered from the blind review of the papers went to:
Maria Belen Vasquez and Jun T. Castro of UP Diliman for their paper entitled “Exploring Travel Patterns of Mobility of Care in Guiuan, Eastern Samar: Assessment of Gender and Sociodemographic Factors Using Spatial Analysis”
There was a tie for the Best Presentation Award. The two were Ms. Vasquez for the presentation of the paper on the Mobility of Care in Eastern Samar, and Mr. Erris Sancianco for the presentation of a paper he co-authored with Noriel Christopher Tiglao, Niki Jon Tolentino, Gillian Kate Hidalgo, Mary Joy Leanda, and Lester Jay Ollero entitled “Evaluating the Fuel Efficiency and Eco-Driving Potential of the EDSA Carousel using On-Board Diagnostics (OBD) and Mobile Crowdsourcing“. These papers will likely find their way to the Philippine Transportation Journal’s next issue.
Though it was not announced, a likely venue for the next conference will be Vigan, Ilocos Sur in the Northern Philippines. The likely host will be the University of Northern Philippines, the premier state university in that province. Previously and most recently, the conference was held in Cebu City (hosted by the University of San Jose-Recoletos) in 2019 and before that in Cagayan De Oro City (hosted by Xavier University) in 2018. TSSP was already organizing the 2020 conference when the pandemic struck and the country went on a lockdown. That conference was supposed to have been held in Baguio City in Benguet, and to be hosted by St. Louis University.
More information on the conference may soon be found at the TSSP’s official website: https://ncts.upd.edu.ph/tssp/
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On walking and running for health
Here is a quick share of an article on walking and running from the New York Times:
Caught (up) in traffic 