Is This Where We’re Headed?

The dangers of the sedentary lifestyle, highlighted by the “sitting is the new smoking” movement, have led to intense debate about the lack of physical activity in our country. We’re spending more time sitting at work, staring at our devices when we’re not at work, and neglecting even the simplest of exercises, such as an evening stroll.

Some believe that technological advancements will require us to perform even less physical activity, resulting in a future where obesity is the norm. This is exemplified by this image from the Pixar film “Wall-E,” where people have moved to space, sit on floating chairs all day, stay glued to their screens, and have become morbidly obese.

Is this really where we’re headed? Granted, this is a movie made for children, and the parents who took them to see it. But it’s clear we’re becoming a less-healthy nation.

We face an obesity crisis, fueled by our sedentary lifestyles and poor food choices. We have multiple devices; the Pew Research Center found that 68% of adults in America have smartphones, and 45% have tablet computers. I’m sure if you’re reading this at a Starbucks, half the people are on a screen. Was Pixar trying to send a message?

Yogi Berra famously once said, “It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” If we want to address and solve the challenges we face today, the answer lies in understanding what has – and has not – worked in the past.

A Period of Innovation

Let’s travel back 130 years. In his deeply insightful novel, “The Rise and Fall of American Growth,” historian Robert Gordon showcased how improvements in lifestyle and environment reduced deaths in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

He also noted how the current growth in chronic conditions is overtaking some of our progress, due to today’s environment and lifestyles. In the book, Gordon examines how the focus shifted in the middle of last century from acute infectious disease to long-term management and care of chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease.

When I read this, I thought about the chronic disease problem we still face 61 years later. Despite our efforts, seven out of ten Americans die each year from chronic diseases, and 86 percent of our country’s health care costs are spent on chronic disease treatment.

Treating chronic disease requires not just clinical expertise, but lifestyle changes. Gordon writes that life expectancy for Americans 60-years-old rose more than 33 percent between 1950 and 2008. And it raises a question: Are we fully prepared to help more people live longer with multiple chronic diseases in today’s sedentary environment?

Public Infrastructure

In his intriguing analysis of the book, Neil Irwin of The New York Times cites a passage from the book on how improvements in public infrastructure – clean water and the disposal of waste – were responsible for improving public health:

·        “In Muncie, Ind., in 1890, there were not more than a dozen bathrooms with running water and sewers across town. By 1925, 75 percent of Muncie’s homes had running water and two-thirds had sewer connections, including almost all newly constructed houses. This is thought to be a major reason public health and life expectancy improved in the years leading to 1920. Many of the major advances in medical treatment, like antibiotics, were yet to arrive, but clean water and waste removal — chlorination and filtration were introduced — cut back the death rate from typhoid fever by a factor of five from 1900 to 1920.”

Gordon also writes that “though it had been recognized in the seventy years before 1940 that environmental factors and social behavior were the most powerful bulwarks of public health, the seventy years that followed concentrated on medical care and centered on pristine, technology-laden hospitals, staffed by increasingly specialized personnel.”

When I thought about these improvements in clean water and waste disposal, it reminded me of a phrase I live by in my current job: health is local. It’s not just about the air you breathe, but the water you drink.

Food vs. Health

It’s a twist of fate that improvements in our basic living conditions in the early 1900s, coupled with continued innovation, have led us to today’s sedentary lifestyles. We’ve evolved into a culture of convenience. We spend long hours at work and, many times, we compensate by eating unhealthy foods that don’t require much time or effort to prepare. It’s easy to categorize obesity as what you eat, but it’s clearly more complicated than that.

Gordon says obesity is a social issue, not a technical one. “Poor children sit in idleness in front of TV screens and eat cheap foods high in fats and cholesterol. Upper-middle-class children eat kale salads before their trip to participate on the soccer team.” Yet it’s where we’re eating that’s causing the most damage:

·        “After a century of stability between 1870 and 1970, total daily calories of food consumption after 1970 increased by more than 20 percent, enough to add fifty pounds to the average adult each year. Hardly any of this rise resulted from sugar consumption; more than half has come from fats and oils, and most of the rest from flour and cereal. Many of these extra calories are consumed away from home.”

While I would argue that our country consumes way too much sugar, as evidenced by our exploding diabetic population, Gordon is right about the calories consumed. Walk into nearly any restaurant where you live and you’ll notice the lack of healthy options less than 500 calories to choose from, or no calorie count disclosed.

It’s no secret that restaurants use excessive salt in many of their options, and salads are difficult to eat while you’re driving. We’ve made it easy to make poor dietary choices and difficult to make the right choices. So what can we do?

The Future is Not Determined

Yes, this is not a simple task. We all know what we need to do, from the countless studies on managing screen time to making better healthy choices. But many of us don’t do it. 

The inspiration to change does not lie in the national statistics we all know too well or the dystopian films that paint a bleak picture. We have to be inspired by the individuals in our lives who have bucked the trends and changed for the better.

The evidence of unbalanced lives is all around us: the lack of healthy, affordable food; people not getting enough sleep; the lack of physical activity. We see it at our offices; we see it in public venues; and it’s reflected in our on-the-go culture. And we’re reminded of it through authors like Gordon, or films like “Wall-E” that comically show us where we could be heading. Yet there are factors beyond our control. Healthy food options must not only become more accessible, but more affordable too.   

Despite the challenges, there is hope. To create a healthier country, we have to look to the courageous people in our daily lives who had the will, desire and discipline to live healthy lifestyles, despite the health system challenges, to avoid becoming statistics. The more we band together with family and friends who support our drive to improve our health, the more successful we’ll become.

Doing this will also require a public awareness movement, similar to the movement Gordon rightfully points out, that drove smoking down by 70 percent from 1977 to 2011. Yet living a healthy lifestyle is much more complex, as opposed to just not smoking. People don’t always do what they’re supposed to do when it comes to health. By channeling the power of simplicity, we can help correct our behavior today so we can secure a healthy future.