Daily Health News Blog

 Forget "slow and steady wins the race." A new study shows that, at least sometimes, the best way to conserve energy and reach your destination on time is to alternate between walking and running -- whether your goal is the bus stop or a marathon finish line. In the January 30, 2013 issue of the Journal of the Royal Society Interface , researchers examined how people budget their time as they travel on foot to reach a destination at a particular appointed time. The study found that when people have neither too much time nor too little time to reach their destination, they naturally switch back and forth between walking and running, which turns out to be the best strategy for saving energy. The study is the first of its kind not conducted on treadmills, and it supports the notion that the human body has an innate sense of how to vary speed to optimize energy when we're on the move in our natural environment. "We don't live our lives on a treadmill,"...