It was months after her father’s suffering was over that my friend mentioned he was a first-responder on 9/11. Her comment was off-handed, made at the end of describing how he’d collapsed and spent his final weeks in the hospital. I would not have thought there might be another cause of his pulmonary fibrosis. After all, he was 82.
“We will encounter people whose lives we cannot save—diseases we cannot cure and injuries too grave to repair—but we can always make dying people more comfortable…to walk with patients, alleviating the person’s discomfort, optimizing his or her quality of life…” Continue reading →
With so many of us getting so little exercise and nearly 20% of GNP being spent on treating people in poor health, the sedentary status quo is unsustainable. “The U.S. economy will collapse if we keep spending the money we’re spending on medical services,” says Richard J. Jackson, a physician, UCLA professor and former US health official. The doctor’s prescription for improving health: make it easier for people to see friends, go to the bus, shopping, work and school under their own power. In Jackson’s words, “we have to build physical activity irresistibly into peoples’ lives.”
1 out of 2 American adults gets no regular exercise.
1 in 3 adults is certifiably obese.
The number of people with type 2 diabetes (a disease related to obesity) has doubled in the past 15 years. Treatment of diabetes accounts for 2% of the GDP.
The longer the car commute, the greater the likelihood of gaining weight.
About 1 in every 10 kids walks or bikes to school today compared with almost 7 in 10 in 1974.
In 2011, three-quarters of California 5th graders failed a simple fitness test.
Thankfully, other Jackson numbers proved his main point: that individuals and communities will be healthier if they are more active.
3,000 borderline diabetics who walked 30 minutes 5 days a week over a 6-month period reduced their diabetes risk by 50%.
After the city of Charlotte, North Carolina opened a light rail line in 2007, drivers who switched to the train lost an average of six pounds and reduced their long-range chances of becoming obese by 81%.
Older Americans who walked 45 minutes three days each week for a year had a 2% increase in brain volume while the brains of those who didn’t exercise shrank by 1.5%.
Meanwhile, a report bythe National Association of Realtors shows that neighborhoods supported by good public transportation (which by definition are “walkable”) can be as valuable as beach front property. A person who uses a bus or train instead of driving can save $750,000 over a lifetime, according to planner/architect Jeff Speck’s new book, Walkable City.
Another lesson in how to be smart with money: when Portland spent $60 million dollars to improve its bicycle transportation system, 4% of drivers switched to cycling. But when the city poured a billion dollars into its transit system, only 2% of drivers moved to public transportation.
Does your family need help to be more connected, active, and healthy? Then get the 1-page Time Priorities Checklist.
I’ve been writing for a while now about why kids who can safely walk or bike to school are happier, healthier, more independent and ready to learn. I asked Dr. Jackson what more parents, communities and schools can do to help kids become durable adults. As he says here, kids need different lessons than they are being taught in the classroom: (interview 1 minute 10 seconds)
I was honored (and lucky) to meet Dr. Jackson just as I was writingHow To Be a Durable Human, so lots of his advice is in the book. You can read the book’s prequel, The Durable Human Manifesto, by downloading the free PDF here or buying the print version.
Listen To Your Mother. Although I couldn’t get my mind around exactly what the show was all about, from the moment I heard there were auditions in the D.C. area, I felt compelled to try out. We were directed to a nondescript hotel in the suburbs of northern Virginia. Despite indications that all was legit, my skin was crawling as I knocked on a door at the end of a long hallway on the ninth floor. But show producer Kate Coveny Hood and director Stephanie Stearns Dulli lived and breathed and couldn’t have been more welcoming and reassuring. I tried to stay calm as I delivered a story I wrote about my durable mom for a recent Mother’s Day. A few weeks later, when I learned I was a chosen one, I was excited and terrified. Reality finally struck that I’d be joining fourteen other writers on the stage of a full-sized theater complete with lights, camera and lively audience. Continue reading →
A good way for kids to be durable in the long run is by learning how to get themselves around. Riding the bus certainly helps them to become more self-reliant, but if they walk or bike they also get a good workout, fresh air and a healthy dose of freedom.
Unlike how it was when you were growing up, only 1 in 10 kids today walk or bike to school. To improve those odds, the national Safe Routes to School program sponsors International Bike to School Day in the spring and Walk to School Day in October.
More and more, school systems in the U.S. and around the world are endorsing the Days, as we have recently here in Fairfax County, Virginia. Some of our schools have expanded to Bike and Walk Week and are even challenging each other to friendly competitions. Others schools encourage students to walk or bike on a particular day each week.
If you want your child give it a try, check out these suggestions: Continue reading →
It was months after her father’s suffering was over that my friend mentioned he was a first-responder on 9/11. Her comment was off-handed, made at the end of describing how he’d collapsed and spent his final weeks in the hospital. I would not have thought there might be another cause of his pulmonary fibrosis. After all, he was 82.
