Ask any citizen in the US if their health and their family’s is a priority and the response will be something like, “well of course our health is my top priority!” “And we are the healthiest country in the world!” Ehhh…no, not true for both statements based upon data from supposedly reputable news outlets.  View the charts at the bottom.

In reality how many Americans exercise on a regular basis? How many manage their nutrition by monitoring their sugar, salt, trans fat, alcohol, etc. intake? Or what about managing stress and emotional health? Not many.

Americans might say or think that we are very health conscious but the statistics show that we really are not.  The US ranked 35th in the world in 2019 from a report from Bloomberg.  Meanwhile Forbes ranked the US #1 worldwide for the amount of money spent on healthcare in 2018. Made obvious from the data is that investing more money in healthcare, doesn’t make a country or the person healthier.  If someone has great healthcare coverage but eats junk food everyday, doesn’t exercise regularly and has a negative outlook, they will probably experience health issues sooner than later.

Our actions support the facts that we don’t truly put exercise, nutrition and stress as high priorities deserving more action than conversation. Healthy living and habits are a choice, or a mindset that we as Americans as a whole, fail terribly at practicing. True is true.

When the research is done, we can also determine that the leading causes of death in the US are all very much influenced by our diet, our sedentary lifestyle (lack of exercise and excessive sitting) and our attitudes towards managing stress or lack thereof. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes and respiratory issues (all leading causes of death by far) can all be much less if we made it a priority to do so.

Which brings us to another issue.  Our media in the US, love it or hate it, usually focuses mostly on reporting deaths relative to terrorism and homicide. So far this year has been the doom and gloom of Covid19. The media, the government and healthcare leaders fail to promote personal responsibility for the individuals’ own actions and how that can affect on a much broader level the health of our nation. Instead there is a strong focus on wearing masks and social distancing as a way to make an unhealthy nation, somehow immune to disease and illnesses that affect most those that have health issues to begin with.

Even typically healthy people do get sick.  Athletes and health enthusiast can get sick too. Nobody gets a free ride, but why don’t we start to look at the root causes for our health issues, instead of looking to politics or others to blame for our own personal accountability. We are where we are, because of our choices. We need to own this. Blaming others will not make us healthier.

Get moving more, eat healthier foods and try to stress less.  These are the keys to a healthier nation.

Be well, stay healthy, be wise.