How Healthy Are We?
A THOUSAND MILLION dollars a day! That is how much people in the United States spend on health care. Inhabitants of the Federal Republic of Germany spend over a fifth of their gross national product, or over 340 thousand million deutsche marks a year, to take care of their health needs. The situation is similar in most other industrialized or developed nations.
There is no doubt that the average citizen in these countries is becoming more health conscious. Books and videos on diets and exercise consistently occupy top spots on best-seller lists. Health foods, vitamins, gym outfits, and exercise gear have become multimillion-dollar businesses. And nowadays the image of a successful person is no longer the cigar-chewing tycoon but the trim, clean-scrubbed, fitness-conscious figure.
With all this attention and interest given to health and fitness, are we really healthier than the people of previous generations? Have the huge sums spent on medical bills and health care resulted in physical well-being for all of us? Really, how healthy are we?
The Picture Today
Contrary to what we might expect, reports from both rich and poor countries around the world show that people today are far from a picture of health. Speaking about the diverse health conditions worldwide, a report prepared by Worldwatch Institute says: “Though their health care needs differ drastically, the rich and the poor do have one thing in common: both die unnecessarily. The rich die of heart disease and cancer, the poor die of diarrhea, pneumonia, and measles.”
In spite of the advances in medical research, heart disease and cancer continue to be the scourge of the affluent countries. In fact, a report in The New England Journal of Medicine says: “We see no reason for optimism about overall progress in recent years. There is no reason to think that, on the whole, cancer is becoming any less common.” As for the fitness boom, the situation is well-summarized by Dr. Michael McGinnis of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “The great majority know the importance of fitness. But they have not taken the action themselves. Americans are not as fit as they think they are.”
At the other end of the scale, “one-quarter of the world’s people lack clean drinking water and sanitary human waste disposal,” says the Worldwatch report. “As a result, diarrheal diseases are endemic throughout the Third World and are the world’s major cause of infant mortality.” Diarrhea, pneumonia, measles, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and other diseases, take the lives of 15 million children under the age of five each year and stunt the normal development of millions more. Yet, the real irony is that experts feel that much of this is easily preventable.
While children in the developed nations may be spared such tragedies, there are alarming signs that the general health of today’s youth is declining rather than improving. For example, The Guardian of London, under the headline “Children ‘Healthier 35 Years Ago,’” reports that a survey by the Medical Research Council has found “substantial increases in the hospital admission of children up to the age of four, a tripling of instances of asthma, and a six-fold increase in eczema among the new generation.” Also found were sharp increases in juvenile diabetes, obesity, stress, and emotional illnesses.
Nationwide studies in the United States have also revealed that the physical condition of schoolchildren today is not what it should be. “It’s the best-kept secret in America today—the lack of youth fitness,” says George Allen, chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. The latest figures released by the council show that 40 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls 6 to 17 years of age cannot do more than a single chin-up. Other studies found that teenagers today have high blood pressure, unhealthy levels of blood cholesterol and body fat, not to mention serious emotional problems, as well as drug-and-alcohol-abuse problems.
Looking Ahead
Most of us realize that our condition of health throughout life is determined, to a certain extent, by the condition of health during our childhood. It is, therefore, not surprising that George Allen observed: “What I’m concerned about is that if you don’t have the youth learning fitness now, they’ll never learn it as adults.” The same holds true with the developing nations, except that there many children are not given the opportunity to develop into healthy adults.
Distressing as they are, the problems are not insurmountable. Individually, wherever you may live, there is something you can do about your health and that of your family. Much of it, however, depends upon your view of your health and of yourself. Indeed, the questions might be asked: What is health? What can you do about maintaining good health? These questions will be considered in the following articles.