As the Montauk Music Festival proceeded on the downtown green late on Saturday morning, a small group met at the gazebo, walked halfway around the circle, and turned north. From Edgemere Street, the group turned left onto Industrial Road, took the hairpin turn onto Second House Road, and before long they were back on Main Street, finally returning to the gazebo to complete the circle.
This was Montauk’s inaugural Walk With a Doc, a national initiative to help people become more physically active while spending time in nature, building friendships, and learning a thing or two about wellness.
Edwin Keeshan, medical director of the hamlet’s Meeting House Lane Medical Practice, led the walk, which circled Fort Pond. The distance, Dr. Keeshan said, is three miles, a measurement he knew as it is the same route taken in the annual Montauk Turkey Run for Fun, founded in 1976 by his father, John Keeshan.
Founded by David A. Sabgir, a cardiologist in Columbus, Ohio, Walk With a Doc happens on the third Saturday of every month. “I’ve been a fan of Walk With a Doc for over 10 years,” said Jeff Tarr Sr. of East Hampton and Manhattan, one of the participants Saturday. “I’ve been a fan of David’s for a long time, too, and I’ve been after him to get somebody out here in East Hampton.” Dr. Keeshan, he said, “is doing great.”
Dr. Keeshan became a physician in 2013 after a 24-year career as a naval officer. He attended medical school at St. George’s University in Grenada and completed his residency at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn.
As many walkers briskly circumambulated the pond, Dr. Keeshan and a few others took a more measured pace, allowing for a question-and-answer session on the go. The benefits of walking, he said, are numerous, as are the perils of a sedentary lifestyle. Walking especially promotes cardiovascular health.
“You can reduce your weight and actually curtail your chances of developing diabetes and heart disease. More than that, there’s a sense of getting away from distractions that cause you to lose focus on what’s important in life.”
Walking, he said, is “a very solitary but social activity with each other. Still, you’re allowed to take in the environment around you, reflect on your place in it. Ultimately, there’s the joy that you can gain from it, because it’s an activity that doesn’t lend itself to cellphones and scrolling Facebook and watching TV news. It’s simply about being, and if you can do that on a regular basis, not only will you fulfill your health goals, like 150 minutes of exercise a week, but you’re going to improve your wellness.”
The doctor has firsthand experience, he said, walking on Old Montauk Highway in the mornings. “It gets my head in the game in the morning, and it gives me a sense of peace and calm.” Whatever time medical professionals start their workday, “it’s not that people are yelling and screaming,” he said, “but you have to pay attention and be on your game from the moment they open the doors.”
Modern life, which for many means sitting at a desk for hours on end, is antithetical to physical wellness, rendering physical activity all the more important.
“When you’re in a sitting position,” Dr. Keeshan told a participant, “it impinges on your circulatory system, especially if you’re carrying a little extra weight downstairs. That weight presses on the femoral arteries and veins,” which in turn impacts the lower extremities. “That’s why you see a lot of older folks who have compromised vascular systems, have blue feet, and they have trouble with neuropathy and pains and loss of sensation, in addition to diabetes and hypertension. Obesity is a major cause of that kind of thing. And sitting, you’re not burning any calories, and you’re setting yourself up for failure if you do it all day long.”
Standing at a desk is “a little bit more effective for health, but not terribly,” the doctor said. “The object is to actually move your body. . . . You have to be at a certain point of using your lungs, using your body, and when you are standing or sitting at a desk all day, it’s just not going to happen. The object here is to work to live, and remember that your body is the only one you’re ever going to get.”
Modern life is incompatible with physical activity only “insofar as we let it be. You’re the master of your own destiny. The patient, when they come in to see a doctor, remains sovereign. They’re in charge of what choices they make. I’m just their coach, their partner. But they absolutely choose what they want to do. And we choose it in everything we do: whether we put up with a job that we don’t like, a job that makes us unhealthy, stressed, and takes years off our life. It’s an actual choice. Sometimes it’s frightening to make a change, but there is always a better alternative. If you’re unhappy, do something else.”
The subject of stress led to the importance of mental wellness in this age of anxiety. “Stress, guilt, despair — these are emotions,” Dr. Keeshan said. “Anxiety is a physical state of being in which stress hormones, adrenaline pumping through your veins, reduce your peripheral cardiovascular delivery. It increases your fight-or-flight response; you’re ready to take on a tiger. Unfortunately, while that saved us on the African savannah, it doesn’t have much efficacy in an office where somebody just snubbed you. That kind of stress manifests itself in our modern urban environment in road rage and angry behavior, and also self-destructive behavior. Realizing that this is a normal human response, and finding a better way to deal with it — these are the goals that we aspire for all our patients to have. That way they can have a happy and long, joyous life, which I think we are all entitled to.”
Participants were elated at the walk’s conclusion. “We exercise regularly,” Laura Leigh Carroll, a nurse who lives in Montauk and Port Washington, said of herself and her husband, who is a doctor. “We think it’s the key to longevity and health, and just feeling better. So when Ed told us about this, we were excited to join him.”
“It’s good for the community,” Suzanne Whitman of Montauk said. “It’s great to get out and move around and be active. I got to talk with people and learn a few things. I’m looking forward to the next one.”