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Yeah, who would have guessed that switching between car, computer and couch all day long could be bad for you? :roll:
Apparently Green Acres is not the place to be -- at least not if you want to be healthy.
The Heart and Stroke Foundation Canada says the popular notion that living in the country or the suburbs is healthier than living in the big city is a delusion.
In fact, urban residents walk and bike more, drive less and, as a result, have healthier weights and healthier hearts.
"It is evident that the suburban dream has gone sour," Anthony Graham, a Toronto cardiologist and spokesman for the Heart and Stroke Foundation, said yesterday at the release of the group's annual report card on heart health.
"Our car-dependent habits are killing us. We have to start focusing on healthy lifestyle habits to replace our 'drive-through' mentality," he said.
Dr. Robert Ross, a professor in the school of physical and health education at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., said that physical activity has been engineered out of our lives, and that problem is particularly acute in non-urban areas, where it is virtually impossible to even walk to a store.
"Non-urban residents are victims of poor planning," he said, blaming the current obesity epidemic in large part on the way suburbs are designed.
In its report card, the foundation shows that smaller centres are far less likely to have sidewalks, bike paths, and public transit.
It recommends that 7 per cent of all infrastructure spending be dedicated to sidewalks, paths and the like, and that municipalities make "active living" a priority when they do planning.
Dr. Ross said that while technological advances are not bad in and of themselves, people need to realize they must find alternative ways to incorporate physical activity into their lives or risk gaining weight and having a host of health problems. Chief among those problems is cardiovascular disease.
"Our body is not meant to sit in a car or in front of a computer all day. We need to incorporate activity into a normal day," he said.
Dr. Larry Frank, a professor in the school of community and regional planning at the University of British Columbia, said the way communities are structured has a profound effect on people's health.
His research clearly shows, for example, that the more time a person drives, the more likely he or she is to be overweight. Similarly, the more a person walks, the less likely the individual is to carry around extra weight.
And the research demonstrates that urbanites are far more active than suburbanites. As a result, people living in urban communities lined with shops and businesses, like Montreal's Plateau district and Vancouver's Kitsilano area, weigh an average of 10 pounds less than those living in residential-only subdivisions like the Calgary suburb of Sundance or Toronto's Meadowvale.
Urban dwellers are also about 35-per-cent less likely to be obese than the suburbanites.
"In non-urban areas, the propensity to be active is disturbingly low," Dr. Frank said. "The suburban dream is clearly not delivering on its promise of a better life."
About half of all adults and one-third of children in Canada are either overweight or obese.
Being obese -- defined as having more than 30-per-cent body weight as fat -- shaves about 10 years off a person's life expectancy. The number of deaths attributable directly to being overweight has almost doubled over the past 15 years, to 4,321 in 2000 from 2,514 in 1985.
Treating medical conditions that flow from being overweight -- including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer -- also costs the health system at least $2-billion annually in direct medical costs. That number is expected to rise sharply because the massive weight gain of Canadians has occurred only in the past decade.
Yeah, who would have guessed that switching between car, computer and couch all day long could be bad for you? :roll:
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