Hiking Health Benefits: Hike Your Better Health

Hiking health benefits encompass physical fitness, mental rejuvenation, and social connection, all within the serene surroundings of nature.

The sedentary lifestyle has been connected with various health issues including type 2 diabetes, obesity, and coronary and cardiovascular diseases. And yet, more than 47% of the global population spends 4 to 6.5 hours on average sitting and this number is rising almost every year (1). To fight back, we need to engage in vigorous physical activity for at least 150 minutes per week. Besides the negative health impact, a sedentary lifestyle increases the pressure on healthcare as well as on our budget. Hiking health benefits encompass physical fitness, mental rejuvenation, and social connection, all within the serene surroundings of nature.

While engaging in physical activity in nature is beneficial, even exposure to nature, in a passive way, can improve our health (2). Hiking represents long-distance outdoor walking on a terrain often covered with rocks and tree roots.

Doesn’t feel like exercise

Many hikers claim that hiking does not feel like exercise or working out, in contrast to other types of exercise like going to the gym. According to one research, hikers burn more calories than runners or walkers because they tend to spend more time in the great outdoors taking in the scenery than they would have if they had been exercising somewhere else. This is partially because hiking’s secondary objectives—such as sightseeing, meeting new people, or taking in the scenery—often coincide with physical activity. This implies that people could be more inclined to stick with the activity over time and dedicate more time to a particular session (3).

Social dimension of hiking

Spending time in nature with others fosters favourable psychosocial effects, and studies indicate that people are more likely to regularly participate in physical exercise when they do it in groups. Families, friendship groups, and dogs may all enjoy hiking together. For instance, social ties made with people when spending time in nature lead to stronger familial bonds. Children engage in social contact more readily in natural settings, and children’s mental health dramatically improved as a result of involvement in an outdoor program where pupils work on various tasks including building pathways.

Hiking is a great way to improve general health and wellness because of the synergistic effects of physical exercise and time spent in nature. Spending frequent time in nature has many positive effects on health and overall well-being. These advantages include physical exercise, social interaction, inhaling air rich in healthy organic chemicals, and rejuvenation. Benefits might be gradual—like a reduction in sadness or an increase in general physical health—or instantaneous—like restoration. Hiking, with its affordable nature, promotes physical activity levels and offers the added advantage of exposing participants to the outdoors, contributing to the array of hiking health benefits (4).

We will discuss how to be ready for hiking in terms of gear and safety in the upcoming post.