Neuroscientist Reveals The Shocking Science & Benefits of Taking a Simple Walk | Mel Robbins Podcast

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Walking is a deeply social act, not just a way to get from A to B

  O'Mara, professor of experimental brain research at Trinity College Dublin and author of In Praise of Walking, says the most surprising thing he found was how social walking is. Humans left Africa on foot 80,000–130,000 years ago in groups that had to watch out for one another. He uses the term "effervescent assembly" for the sense of self and other dissolving when people walk together for a shared cause. He says no other species marches together like this.

• 02

  Inactivity is linked to personality and brain changes over time

  He describes a US panel study tracking personality against activity. People who became more sedentary, even in midlife, tended to become less sociable, less open to experience and more prone to negative emotion. He stresses this was about inactivity, not simply age.

• 03

  Walking challenges the brain more than you notice

  Standing up, keeping your balance, orienting yourself, building a mental map, adjusting your pace on a hill and carrying shopping home are all small demands on the brain. Brain rhythms that are quiet while you sit become active. He compares the body to a new bike left in a garage for a year: chain silted, tyres flat, brakes unresponsive. Bodies and brains need repeated challenge.

• 04

  We have designed movement out of our environment

  Our bodies evolved to conserve energy, yet we now live with a calorie surplus. O'Mara argues that environments should make walking the easy default. He doesn't want to blame individuals, because poor footpaths, bad lighting, fear of crime and buildings built around elevators decide a lot of how much people move.

• 05

  Walking reliably boosts mood, even for people who dislike it

  He calls the mood boost one of the most certain findings in this field. In lab studies, people who walked 10–15 minutes to rate campus buildings felt better than those who rated photos, including people who say they hate walking. Walking in nature adds a further boost on top of the walk itself.

• 06

  Be careful with neurochemical claims

  O'Mara warns that most studies that mention dopamine never measured it, because you can't measure it in a living person's brain without invasive procedures. Cortisol can be measured in blood or saliva. What the evidence mostly shows is correlation, not cause. He describes the benefit as several things working together: falling stress hormones, the sense of motion as scenery moves past ("optic flow"), a break from rumination, and time in nature.

• 07

  Creativity needs time away from the problem, and walking provides it

  Staring at a hard problem is the worst way to solve it. Creative thinking moves between preparation and incubation, and between big picture and detail, like seeing the forest and the trees at once. In studies, people who walked before problem-solving produced substantially more creative ideas than people who sat; Mel mentions roughly double. O'Mara says the science of walking and creativity is still at an early stage, with no definitive recipe.

• 08

  Mild physical engagement may bring buried ideas to the surface

  He calls the state "mindlessness": unlike mindfulness, you aren't watching your thoughts; you're out of your own head. His idea is that a slightly more active brain "tickles" ideas just below awareness so they rise to the surface. Slumped in a chair, nothing comes. He presents this as his own working idea, not a settled finding.

• 09

  Small, frequent bouts of walking beat one big session

  Non-industrialised groups move at a low level all day with rest in between, rather than in one burst. Getting up for two minutes every half hour is good advice, and one workout won't cancel out a day of sitting.

• 10

  Match your pace to your purpose

  For heart health, walk fast enough that talking is hard, which he says beats slow jogging. For thinking, walk more slowly. He demonstrates by asking Mel to subtract 17s from 1,000. The mental load shows how fast walking would leave no capacity for thinking.