Walking is the best medicine, which combined with good sleep & a healthy diet can help one avoid the Doctor altogether. Walking is a single practice which could significantly benefits the body & mind. Walking is the most popular form of exercise accessible to all, free of cost with minimal risk of injury. This needs no training, special skills, expensive equipment, facilities or clothing & ideal for the young & elderly alike.

“Walk with a Doc”, an unique walking movement, has helped lakhs of people across the world improve their health. The movement was originated in the year 2005, by a cardiologist in Columbus, Ohio. Frustrated with his inability to affect behavior change in the clinical setting, the cardiologist invited his patients to go for a walk with him in a local park on a spring Saturday morning. To his surprise, over 100 people showed up, energized & ready to move.

Narmada Kidney Foundation & Global Hospital, Mumbai replicated this concept with Nephrologist Dr. Bharat Shah at Shivaji Park, Dadar. The first walk was on Sunday 11^th Fab 2018 which got overwhelming response. The story continued on subsequent Walks on 25^th March, 22^nd April & 20^th May.

During one of the Walk, Dr. Bharat Shah explained the importance of walking in simple & logical way. Putting of weight, is the beginning of lot of health problems. When we walk, our calorie expenditure increases & we prevent ourselves from becoming overweight. If we don’t become overweight, then we don’t tend to develop high blood pressure & diabetes. Obesity is the risk factor for both high blood pressure & diabetes. So if we regularly exercise, walking is one of the best form, we can prevent obesity, high blood pressure & diabetes. These are three main reasons why we see lot of life style related problems in our Country & all over the World. Obesity, high blood pressure & diabetes increases risk of heart disease, Cholesterol Builds up in the blood. It clots our blood vessels & we can get heart attack. Just like heart attack, one can get brain attack which is also called as stroke. So very often, we think that nothing is going to happen to us, all these complications happen over years & years. But over a period of time, we significantly compromises the quality of life & the longevity because of heart disease & brain disease. If the blood supply to few parts of the body is reduced, it practically affects every part of the body. This combination of obesity, high blood pressure & diabetes is the biggest reason of kidney disease. And the kidney disease further affects other parts of body. So it’s a vicious cycle. These life style diseases can be prevented which has tremendous economic impact. There is a huge cost involved, all over the world, in the treatment of life style related diseases. May be, if we have high B. P., we are on medicines for life long. And over the time, number of medicines keep on increasing. If we develop diabetes, we need to go on diabetes medicines, insulin. In spite, if we have all these medicines, because we don’t get a good control, we develop all complications. We may get heart disease, angioplasty, by-pass surgery, stroke etc. Our mobility is affected. We may get kidney disease in due course. This is not very simple and because we don’t understand that, we don’t take simple preventive measures like Walking.

At present, ‘Walk with a Doc’ is organized as a monthly program. The efforts are being made to make it more frequent. Whoever takes the first step towards better health, will pick up the habit of Walking.