Car-driven Society Poses Risk to Americans’ Health

A June 1, 2009 article in the Reuters online newspaper. Researchers have found that the habit of driving everywhere is bad for the health of Americans. The article says:
The more you drive, the less you walk. Walking provides exercise without really trying.  Ideally, people should take 10,000 steps a day to maintain wellness, according to James Hill, professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado.

But for those who only walk from their home to the car and from their car to an office and back again, that figure can sink to only 1,000 steps.  A car culture forces people to make time to exercise and driving long distances reduces the time available to work out. Lawrence Frank of the University of British Columbia was able to quantify the link between the distance people drive  and their body weight:

Every additional 30 minutes spent in a car each day translates into a 3 percent greater chance of being obese. People who live in neighborhoods with a mix of shops and businesses within easy walking distance are 7 percent less likely to be obese.

For your health – walk more and bicycle more.

by Tricia Hess, Denver Outdoor Adventure Examiner, link to original article

Hiking burns up fat and calories. Getting out and hiking cross-country for four hours a month will cause a 155 lb. person to burn off a pound of fat. If you hiked once every weekend for 2 hours you could lose two pounds a month, twenty-four pounds yearly. For your convenience, I have  provided a calculator for calories burn at the link below.

I can’t stress the following enough:

Drink plenty of water the day before a hike to make sure you hit the trail well hydrated. Bring a least a quart of water per hour that you intend to be hiking. And drink it all. If you wait till you’re thirsty you are already starting to dehydrate. Every time you tilt the water bottle to drink, swallow five times.

Eat a low fat, high carbohydrate meal, several hours before you hike to make sure you have energy to finish the hike. An excellent meal would be a large bowl of oatmeal. Not the small packages of nuked oatmeal, but the type you have to cook. I add currants, sliced apples, nuts and cinnamon. Other suggestions are blueberries and cranberries. Be forewarned, you will get hooked.

Calories Burn Calculator

Nalgene will be phasing out its bottles made with the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) over the next several months due to health risks of BPA, namely neurological and behavioral problems in infants and babies, along with certain cancers, diabetes and obesity.
Here’s an article from MSNBC with more details.

So, what are your options? The Nalgene website offers a comparison chart for different bottles for outdoor use.

If you want to stick with plastic, you can try Nalgene’s newest water bottles made from Eastman Tritan polyester. Nalgene also still makes bottles out of HDPE and LDPE (high/low density polyethylene) which contains neither bis-phenol-A (BPA) or phthalates (a plasticizer that has been questioned for its possible effects on developing sexual organs). Tritan has high impact resistance and the clarity hikers have come to like in polycarbonate bottles (the ones with BPA). HDPE has a cloudy look that some hikers may remember from the “old days” and can retain odors more than Tritan or polycarbonate.

Another alternative is stainless steel, which can avoid any concerns, present or future, over plastics, plasticizers, or unreacted monomers. However, stainless that is not coated internally may not be an optimal choice for highly acidic materials, and those with internal coatings may worry some. If you use iodine-based tablets for water purification, it is hard to see in a stainless bottle when the tablet has dissolved, which is when the clock starts ticking before you can drink the water safely.

As a hiker who’s still using my polycarbonate bottles (and I have at least 8 of them!) for cold water-based liquids, I don’t think the evidence is yet strong enough to confirm that I need to toss them.

I’ve always felt better when surrounded by greenery. Now studies are proving that humans fare better when exposed to natural scenery, even when exercising. A stroll down a trail is better for you than a walk through the mall. Of course, they gave it a name: green exercise. Read “Outdoors makes a better gym for the brain” here.

Getting people to go outside and play is what Footprint Press Recreation Guidebooks has been about for 11 years now. We love green exercise.