I got a real surprise when I was reading Dr. Andrew Weil’s newsletter a couple of days ago. Apparently, the New York Health Department released a report in 2007 that said a person born in 2004, living in New York City could expect to live to be 78.6 years old. I know, we hear every day of people who live much longer than that. Most of us probably know some of them personally. However, the national average for life expectancy is 77.9. New York isn’t a long way ahead of that, but the amazing thing is that people living in what may be one of the most stressful, polluted environments in the U.S. are even surviving as long as the national average, much less longer.
Dr. Weil says there are three reasons for it. The city-wide smoking ban has lowered smoking related deaths by 10%, New York supplies a wide variety of healthy food options, and New Yorkers WALK. Not only do they walk more than most of us, they appear to do it faster. Wandering slowly in New York City quickly marks you as a tourist.
In New York, there are many people who don’t even own cars. Most people, whether they own a car or not, take the subway or the bus as close to their destination as possible, then walk the rest of the way. People walk to the corner store, bar, or restaurant instead of driving. New York is not a city with acres of convenient parking lots at every store. Even people who drive to the area where they want to shop or have an appointment, must park in a centralized location and walk to finish their trip. Their environment forces them to exercise.
Life without access to a private vehicle is difficult in these locations. We all own cars of some kind. Walking simply isn’t part of our routine existence. To exercise, we are forced to join a gym or drive to a park with a walking trail. We have to plan a time for it in our already packed schedules.
My neighborhood does have sidewalks, but I still have a tendency to drive to the park to exercise. The trail is so much nicer than a sidewalk and there is no traffic to interrupt my path. Of course, on days when it is too hot, too cold, pouring rain, or my schedule gets too tight, it is easy to opt out of the exercise and leave it for a “later” that never arrives. New Yorkers, on the other hand, cannot make that choice. Their walking is built into their lives and they have to go to work, or to the store, whatever the weather.
While they, and the citizens of many other cities as well, walk to live, we who live in a supposedly healthier world, fight to do as little organic walking as possible. We circle the parking lot looking for the very closest parking spot to the door to save ourselves that extra 50 feet of walking. When shopping at several stores in the same strip mall, we go back to our cars and drive to the store at the other end, instead of walking there and back.
I live less than a mile from my downtown area and the library used to be located there. In spite of the fact that I could have walked it easily, I never did. I drove down and parked as close as possible to avoid that extra few feet, just like everyone else. The library is now in temporary quarters in the mall, and guess what happens. Yes, we all drive there and park as close to the entrance as we can get. They get frequent comments from patrons about how nice it is that there is now such convenient parking. We will be building a new library and one of the areas of concern is providing enough of that convenient parking so that people can avoid too much walking.
Scientists say that simply walking for 30 minutes to an hour, and not necessarily all at once, just five days a week could lower our chances of diabetes, high blood pressure and many other debilitating diseases. Exercise is actually good for arthritis and it helps make our bones stronger. I know that our environment has a big influence on how we handle our daily routines, but we should be making an effort to overcome the unhealthy aspects of that environment instead of giving in to it. Park at the edge of the parking lot, walk that extra 150 feet into Walmart or Target. It will help you live longer.
