On May 30, 2:20 pm, "TibetanMonkey, the Beach Cruiser Philosopher"
Post by His Highness the TibetanMonkey, the Beach Cruiser PhilosopherBut that's the American way, though some say that's the model
pioneered by Los Angeles. New York is not like that. But even in the
southern sprawls there's hope: the MIGHTY BIKE. It may just be the
vehicle of liberation, I mean liberation from the cage.
But that's only my humble opinion.
I don't want to brag about my humbleness, but everytime I get it
right. Well, it's perhaps the Wisdom of the Jungle gives me this sense
of sharp awareness of the world that facts follow my humble opinions.
Case in point is New York (City) above.
Now it has been proven that living in New York makes you live longer.
Perhaps it's because the monkey is out of the cage, perhaps it's
because they are rewarding positive behavior ("positive conditioning"
I think it's called) that people are eating better, banning smoking
and thus living longer. The saying "I love NY" now has a deeper
meaning. We may have to add "but I hate America" --at least the
America that hates people.
(I QUOTE)
Want to Live Longer? Move to NYC
While life expectancy in many parts of the United States is dropping,
it has increased by 10 years in Manhattan since 1987. Researchers
largely attribute that rise — the fastest in the nation — to a
crackdown by the New York City health department on unhealthy
behaviors.
Manhattanites can now expect to live to the ripe old age of 82, and
the average life expectancy across all five New York City boroughs is
80.6 years. That's three years beyond the national average, and a
striking turnaround since the city's low point in 1990, when life
expectancy there trailed the U.S. average by three years.
The numbers come from researchers at the University of Washington's
Institute for Heath Metrics and Evaluation, who recently estimated the
life expectancies in all 3,147 independent American cities and
counties each year from 1987 through 2009. Even with New York's
success, the IHME team found life expectancy in the country as a whole
lengthened just 1.7 years per decade, a slower pace of progress than
in the world's most long-lived countries. (The United States ranks
50th in that regard, according to the CIA World Fact Book.)
So, why is New York doing so well, and how can other U.S. cities get
their residents' longevities up to speed? [Infographic: A Day in the
Life of the Average American]
According to the British medical journal The Lancet, most gains made
during the 1990s aren't replicable elsewhere. The city ramped up its
life expectancy by reining in homicide rates and HIV/AIDS-related
mortality, both of which had weighed down the average at the beginning
of the decade.
However, gains made after 2000 reflect true improvements in individual
health. Mirroring the national average, some 87 percent of deaths in
the Big Apple result from noncommunicable diseases — preventable
ailments such as heart disease and lung cancer — but the number of
yearly deaths from those causes is steadily falling. The IHME
researchers determined that more than 60 percent of the increase in
New Yorkers' life expectancy since 2000 can be attributed to
reductions in heart disease, cancer, diabetes and stroke.
Lead researcher Ali Mokdad said the reduction is largely thanks to
aggressive efforts by city health officials to simply take away
unhealthy choices from residents. The health department has, for
example, banned trans fats, prohibited smoking in public spaces and
hiked taxes on cigarettes. It has also rolled out hundreds of miles of
new bicycle lanes, mandated the use of calorie labels on menus in
chain restaurants and plastered posters up in subways with information
about the risks of obesity and the benefits of preventive health
services. [What Are the Leading Causes of Death?]
At the moment the city is considering a partial ban on large servings
of sugar-sweetened drinks, which would go into effect next year.
“For way too long, public health departments have defined their
responsibilities as essentially infectious- disease control rather
than improvement of health of the population," New York City Health
Commissioner Thomas Farley told The Lancet. In 21st-century New York,
the real concerns are tobacco, poor nutrition and inactivity, so the
health department has made them their new focus, he said. "It's not a
given that we're going to continue to have high rates of smoking and
high rates of [noncommunicable] diseases; those are as preventable as
infectious diseases were 150 years ago."
http://www.livescience.com/20964-life-expectancy-nyc.html
***
WORD FROM THE WISE: WE NEED TO BE OUT OF THE CAGE AND SOCIALIZE.
REWARD GOOD BEHAVIOR, PUNISH BAD BEHAVIOR. RIDE BIKE!!! Notice how the
rest of America sucks while those who can afford it move to Gated
Communities, thus leaving communities --which they consider the
jungle-- fall apart. I'm telling you, "MY COMMUNITY IS FULL OF
SHIT" (that's dog shit and cat shit and people give a shit) and that's
very bad. And it could be worse. While my community has people going
around, most communities have no people in sight. It's like a disease
has hit town and everybody is dead. And that disease --my dear
friends-- is FEAR. Maybe the political system is falling apart too.
Are these ghostowns governed by anyone? I can only think of a cure:
MAKE PEOPLE RIDE BIKES AND ENJOY LIFE.
But that's only my humble opinion.
