Where You Live Affects Your Fitness
During the course of your growing up years, you lived wherever
your parents chose to live. You didn't give any thought to the
health implications of the location your parents chose, or if
they had chosen a place that was conducive to your physical,
mental, and spiritual health. Chances are your parents didn't
give it much thought either. Not until recently, has there ever
been given any thought to the fact that where you live affects
your level of fitness. But it does, and it's a piece of
information that is sure to influence many generations to come.
So how is this information compiled, and what can we learn
from it? The information is compiled based on statistical
information from areas such as smog levels, pollution levels,
water quality, government based fitness incentives, and
recreational and fitness facilities available. Generally, one of
the major magazines published in the United States, will compile
all this statistical data, and publish an article as a
recreational guide to healthy cities.
What do we learn from all this published information? That
where we live really does affect our health and well-being, and
sometimes, there's very little we can do about changing that
fact. Unless, of course, you want to move. Often, the greatest
contributor to our health and fitness, via our outside
environment, is the level of pollution we're forced to live with
on a daily basis. How do we absorb pollutants in our outside
environment? The most common way is through the air we breathe.
It is not the only way, however.
The water we drink, the homes we live in, and the cars we
drive, all have the potential for unhealthy contaminants. Our
work environment at one time was a contributor to the pollutants
we were exposed to, but thanks to greater Environmental
Protection regulation, most of those dangers have been
eradicated.
Past the pollutants contribution, the availability of health
facilities, the amount of government support for health and
fitness, and the availability of medical faculties also affects
our health and wellness from a location standpoint. If you live
in a rural area with no direct access to health facilities, and
there is no medical facility, your level of fitness and health
will not compare to that of a person who lives in a more
populated area that can offer those things. The down side to the
more populated area, of course, is a greater risk of air
pollution.
Some areas of this country are just fitness conducive. Places
where the air is still free from pollutants, there is an
availability of hiking, biking, and walking trails, and the
medical and fitness facilities are numerous. The problem with
most of those places, however is that they are mostly of a
recreational base, not manufacturing or otherwise
industrialized, and jobs are not that numerous. What can you do
about your own fitness concerns, based on where you live? Make
the most of where you are. Educate yourself about the greatest
fitness problems in your area, and do what you can to make
corrections for your own fitness benefit.