Healthy Lifestyles Create Healthy Environments

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book.  ~Irish Proverb

There are many proverbs along the lines of saying treat yourself well and you will be able to treat others well. This goes for the environment as well. Our lifestyles have become less healthy, and have resulted in damage to our society and environment. Thus to improve our environment we must first seek to improve our society and ourselves. The connection can seemingly work the reverse as well. These improvements are often cumbersome, but as more people switch to an environmentally friendly attitude they can imagine living another way.

Our lifestyles have become increasingly fast paced circa the industrial revolution. This has created a situation where we sleep less, which is inversely correlated with obesity among many other health problems. Less sleep causes us to eat more; experts say adults need seven to nine hours of sleep. Our lifestyles have also become one of convenience. This convenience is addicting and even arresting. We have built our city’s so that driving is almost a necessity, due to urban sprawl. The suburbs are only viable with cars. Because of this we walk less, and are burn less calories. Our air conditioners and heaters are also very luxurious like our cars but they also cause us to burn fewer calories because our bodies have to do less work to regulate their temperature. These lifestyles of convenience are also hurting our earth just as it does our bodies.  Fast and frozen food is very high in calories, fat and chemicals. This type of food also has a lot of packaging and is shipped from far away. The wrappers have also been coated with a product to repel the grease, they contain endocrine disruptors. These endocrine disruptors are associated with obesity, yet unfortunately there are many more with ever worsening negative effects. Endocrine disruptors do not break down easily and stay in our earth and bodily systems for hundreds of years.

Image courtesy of Creative Commons.

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