Dr. Michael Mosley admits he was completely wrong about exercise that burns more fat and fights heart disease

Dr. Michael Mosley has said he was completely wrong about one form of exercise, explaining that it would help you lose more weight, counteract heart disease, help with back pain and work as a full body workout. The health and wellness expert, speaking on his BBC podcast Just One Thing, said Nordic walking – which uses poles – burns more calories, works more muscles and improves quality of life.

Dr Mosley, famous for his 5:2 and Fast 800 eating plans, said he had thought it was for older walkers who weren’t strong enough to walk without them. However, he explained – turns out I’m completely wrong – using poles like this increases the intensity of walking, turning it from a walk into a full-body workout. Not only does it increase the intensity of your walk, but it can lead to greater fitness and weight loss than regular walking. Almost anyone can do it. In fact, a recent study showed that Nordic walking is surprisingly good for people with existing heart disease.

Dr. Mosley said the Nordic: It could help you burn more fat without going farther or faster. He cited a study where researchers randomly assigned 38 middle-aged people to about an hour of brisk walking three times a week for six months. Half of them were asked to do Nordic walking while the others did regular walking. Although both groups got fit, only the pole-moving group saw significant reductions in body fat.

He said: Why? Well, it’s probably because when you’re pole flying, you’re engaging almost twice as many muscles as engaging your upper body muscles can also help improve your posture, which is something I need to do. Nordic walking can also help with back pain. In the case of back pain, Dr. Mosley said for a recent study, 80 volunteers with chronic low back pain were randomly assigned to Nordic walking for one hour, 2 to 3 times a week for four weeks or they simply asked to go on with their normal lives. At the end of four weeks, the Nordic walking group reported significant reductions in pain along with improvements in fitness, strength and flexibility. They also reported an impressive 23% improvement in their mental health.

Dr. Jennifer Reed of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute described a test that was performed on patients with heart disease. He said the patients were randomly assigned to one of these three groups and performed these particular exercises twice a week over the course of 12 weeks at a rehabilitation center.

He said: We found that Nordic walking led to greater improvements in functional capacity over the 12-week program, all of our groups led to improvements in functional capacity, but it was Nordic walking that actually led to a bigger improvement.

Functional capacity describes the activities of daily living that you would do during your normal daily routine that require physical effort. The way we measured functional capacity in this trial was through a six-minute walk test where we asked our participants to walk across an indoor track as fast as they could for six minutes. And this distance measured at the end of the six minutes represents our measure of functional capacity.

She explained that the Nordic walking group came out on top, a result that surprised her. She said: She thinks it was effective for several reasons. One is that Nordic walking leads to improvements in strength, upper body, lower body and core muscles. In addition, there can be an increase in confidence, improved posture that comes with regular use of Nordic walking poles, as well as walking speed. All these elements probably contributed to an improvement in functional capacity after the Nordic walking group.