![]() Folks this stat comes from an unbiased source of from the World Health Organization. Here are the dollars and cents facts of the U.S. Health Care dilemma, To my way of thinking economics tells us the real story. I ask the question which is why is the US health care costs in relationship to let’s say to the average in GREY so much higher. In fact, I would suggest that our costs are in fact, double the world average. It tells me that something is going on in the U.S. that most medical gurus still haven’t tapped into. In thinking of a Henry David Thoreau answer to this dilemma, he would suggest that few doctors are finding the root, while so many doctors are searching for this answer at the stem. Here is my take on the matter. I believe that in particular in the U.S. we don’t walk enough. It is as if when we are children our total focus is on walking, but once we age, our focus moves to sitting. My belief is the phrase, “Don’t use it, you’ll lose it”. My other belief is that if you are going to sit so much you might as well be lying in bed. That might seem extreme talk but only by walking and standing is how atrophy can’t set in. The more as a society we walk less and sit more we set our Health Care and Self Care standards low, so our Health Care costs will have to rise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita The Crisis in American Walking ~ How we got off the pedestrian path Folks here are more facts that you might not like to read. “For walking is the ultimate “mobile app.” Here are just some of the benefits, physical, cognitive and otherwise, that it bestows: Walking six miles a week was associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s (and I’m not just talking about walking in the “Walk to End Alzheimers”); walking can help improve your child’s academic performance; make you smarter; reduce depression; lower blood pressure; even raise one’s self-esteem.” And, most important, though perhaps least appreciated in the modern age, walking is the only travel mode that gets you from Point A to Point B on your own steam, with no additional equipment or fuel required, from the wobbly threshold of toddlerhood to the wobbly cusp of senility. Despite these upsides, in an America enraptured by the cultural prosthesis that is the automobile, walking has become a lost mode, perceived as not a legitimate way to travel but a necessary adjunct to one’s car journey, a hobby, or something that people without cars—those pitiable “vulnerable road users,” as they are called with charitable condescension—do. To decry these facts—to examine, as I will in this series, how Americans might start walking more again— may seem like a hopelessly retrograde, romantic exercise: nostalgia for Thoreau’s woodland ambles. But the need is urgent. The decline of walking has become a full-blown public health nightmare. *** The United States walks the least of any industrialized nation. Studies employing pedometers have found that where the average Australian takes 9,695 steps per day (just a few shy of the supposedly ideal “10,000 steps” plateau, itself the product, ironically, of a Japanese pedometer company’s campaign in the 1960s), the average Japanese 7,168, and the average Swiss 9,650, the average American manages only 5,117 steps. Where a child in Britain, according to one study, takes 12,000 to 16,000 steps per day, a similar U.S. study found a range between 11,000 and 13,000.” http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t_americans_walk_more_the_crisis_of_pedestrianism_.html If we compare both that our U.S. Health Costs are double the average and that on average U.S. citizens walk half as far as the ideal, maybe both of these stats suggest both a problem and a solution. If we don’t walk as much as we once did, (mostly due to the use of the automobile), that maybe if we would reduce using the car and double our steps, some of our health care costs might reverse and go down. And more importantly, we in the U.S. might overcome some of the ailments and receive some of the benefits that this article suggests. “Let’s Dance” and My Story David Bowie is one Anglo Saxon who had changed his life by adding more rhythm. In fact, I borrowed that heading above that came from his #1 on the charts and selling song. Besides, it introduces you will into the idea of Rhythmic Charisma. When I had a serious case of cancer out of lack of breath and reduced movement, atrophy set in and I noticed that I began to walk not only slow but funny and not my normal gate. So after my chemo treatments I decided that once I got healthy I would relearn how to walk by starting to walk more and change my health and my life. In a way, my getting so sick, was a blessing because eventually I began to step it up. Another event happened as well. While overcoming cancer I was watching a documentary of David Bowie and on his rhythmic song called, “Let’s Dance” and that moved up the charts, I will explain more of what I learned from him but before I do I want to tell you more about my own story.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Author
|