An increasing body of evidence suggests that walking can cure what ails you.

A Finnish study last year, significant for the large number of people who participated (16,000), showed that those who take as few as six brisk, 30-minute walks a month have a 43 percent lower risk of premature death than non-exercisers and a 29 percent lower risk than occasional exercisers.

Until the 1970s, doctors and therapists commonly treated chronic back pain with bed rest. Then studies showed that being a full-time couch potato was less likely to cure patients than to make them one with the couch.

Walking has also been shown to ease painful conditions such as fibromyalgia, which affects tissues that connect muscle and bone.

Pub Date: 03/21/99