Methodological aspects of walking prescription and dose-response relationship in disease prevention

Abstract

The sedentariness is one of the major public health problems in the world, leading to an increase of disease incidences and mortality due to several cases. Nevertheless, the regular practice of exercise leads to several benefits to health. Among the ways of physical activity, walking is one of the most performed by the population because it is easier to be executed and implies low cost and reduced risk of injuries. In addition, literature has demonstrated that walking may be quite useful in prevention and treatment of several diseases, reducing or stabilizing the amount of medicines. However, the data regarding the dose-response relationship in order to observe these improvements are still inconsistent. Besides, training guidelines involving the walking are too much general as well. This study investigated especially these subjects and aims to detail some questions associated with the dose-response relationship of the practice of walking in different health problems, as well as discussing some methodological considerations that involve efficient and safe prescription of this activity. Thus, the text was divided up into three topics. First, the dose response relationship regarding the practice of walking was discussed. The next topic addressed the function of walking in prevention and treatment of some diseases and risk factors, as the reduction of the medication use. Lastly, methodological considerations with respect to walking prescription were discussed along with the role of detection of walk-run transition to exercise prescription.