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Let’s Move: Take Control of Our Own Health Conditions
I am not a big fan of Michelle Obama, but I liked her push to get kids to exercise. Her Let’s Move initiative tried to address a problem that has deep implications for the country, which I feel Covid-19 has highlighted as brightly as a yellow magic marker slashed across the 2020 calendar.
Of course, the Obama administration also canceled the Presidential Fitness Award in schools, which many of us experienced as students, but I’m willing to believe a program that was first implemented in the 1960s needed some updating, and Let’s Move initiatives at least promote 60 minutes of physical activity every day in K-12 education.
But now many schools are not meeting at all. Team sports are mostly canceled. And I know from my own experiences as a parent that any stress on exercise in the school day had eroded quite a bit before the Obama era, much less the pandemic. It’s no great mystery how over 30% of young Americans have become so overweight that they are automatically ineligible for military service. That has long been identified as a national security issue.
Now I should say I personally was not an athlete as a kid taking PE. I was a severe asthmatic who only enjoyed parachute day. But it doesn’t take a genius to see an unfit society with sedentary children leads to all sorts of problems as those kids turn into sedentary adults with lots of underlying health issues. Covid-19 has exposed some of these health consequences, to be sure, though our responses have been so myopic that almost a year into the thing we still aren’t treating any of those problems now, which strikes me as absolutely cray-cray.
Let me highlight some of my own experiences to give you a better sense of my thinking.
I ran three half-marathons in early 2020 before all outdoor races were essentially canceled across the country, and people were told to stay inside. In a matter of weeks, there were no more running clubs meeting. People were told to socially distance while running, so there were no more running partners, no events to keep one accountable, no running community anymore to motivate anyone to go out on those cold, dark days when it’s a heckuva lot easier to just stay inside and eat waffles.
What happened to me in the “lockdown” period?
I gained seven pounds, which I called my “Covid baby,” as I grew unhappier every day and definitely more unhealthy.
I finally said nope.
I felt as if a virus that I’ve never had was actively killing me in the late spring, early summer. I was not willing to let that continue any longer, so I started running long miles again alone through a city that looked like Zombie Apocalypse Land with only homeless people milling about on the sidewalks. I ignored the nonsensical posts I read online about wearing masks in the open air out of a “sense of solidarity” with my fellow man. (Not only were these posts not scientific, they had the real impact of discouraging vigorous exercise.) I convinced my best friend who lives over a thousand miles away to start running with AirPods, so we could “meet up” for super “socially distanced” runs a couple of mornings a week.
Unfortunately, my poor husband with bad knees who lifts weights for fitness had a lot longer to wait to get back to a health-focused regime because all the at-home gym equipment was sold out across the country for months, and the gyms were all shut down. (To this day, contact tracing shows any spread in gyms where they have been opened has been negligible.) This is still the case in many states–gyms are closed–which I believe actively exacerbates this health crisis.
This has made me a bit angry.
I have never once heard Dr. Fauci–or anyone else from the public sector during the pandemic–discuss how Covid-19 shows us the American lifestyle needs to change. Instead of sitting on our couches, we need to get moving. We need to admit that one of the problems we have as a country requires individuals to get up and do something proactive, especially if we have children. We should not simply “stay at home.”
I think vaccines are great, especially for the elderly, but let’s be real, shall we?
Our bigger, long-term problems cannot be addressed with a shot because no mere shot is getting rid of any of the many co-morbidities that have made way too many people vulnerable in the first place. After all, while some of a person’s risk factors are often completely outside a person’s control–cancer, chronic kidney disease, sickle cell anemia–there are other risk factors that have been created by an individual’s poor choices, i.e., obesity, smoking, and (often) the onset of Type 2 Diabetes.
Now I am about to sound super mean.
Instead of worrying about fat people being more accepted in our culture–a movement that has definitely been a “thing” for the last decade or two–I wish we would start addressing our underlying fitness issues in this country. In fact, I’ve started to get a bit resentful about the fact that we aren’t.
When I’m told it’s my “civic duty” to wear a mask when I’m out, why can’t I say it’s someone else’s “civic duty” to put down that Twinkie and go do some squats, so they aren’t as vulnerable to being seriously hurt by this virus in the first place?
In response, you might say “fat” isn’t contagious, but I say people not taking care of themselves has had a huge impact on medical costs in the country, which I have long been asked to help carry. I hear all the time about the percentage of the American population that has a co-morbidity, which has led to my whole life being upended during this pandemic to protect them.
Please don’t hear me wrong. I understand that people in great shape have passed away with Covid-19. Not every co-morbidity can be controlled, as I said above. I also indulge in an occasional Twinkie. Yet it’s pretty beyond dispute that healthier lifestyles often ameliorate the impact of most chronic diseases (including my asthma), say all doctors everywhere. And we know that more than 90 percent of the people who have actually passed away after contracting Covid-19 had an underlying health condition.
So wouldn’t it be worthwhile to have a broader conversation about how people working out is a much better choice than staying home in isolation? I mean, if we actually could start an exercise craze–think the running revolution of the 1970s!–I think the United States would be a stronger, better, happier country in the future.
I don’t care which person gets this started. Let’s just get moving… now.
Published in General
Well, currently he is in JAG, so no cannon fodder possibilities, but I think he has a bit of your fighting spirit. (Siggggggghhhhhh.)
Wait. Should we be addressing you as Dr. Lane?
Oops. Wrong thread.
Ha!!!! Nope. I’m an adjunct history professor at a community college with no terminal degree. No one even pretends to respect me! :)
We at Ricochet do.
What a gallant comment. Well done.
This bodyweight training course is a bargain.
Today’s results are encouraging. I spent about 2.5 hours adding to the woodpile with no adverse effects to keep me from doing a more energetic bicycle ride tonight yet. And I got a lead about somebody who might want my wood. I asked one neighbor who brought over some mis-delivered FedEx packages if he knew anyone who might need it, and he told me of another neighbor who was helping out a “needy veteran” with firewood. The 2nd neighbor says it isn’t really a needy veteran, just a friend, but anyhow I’m getting the word out.
Last Friday I had finally gotten to see an infectious disease specialist to which my doctor had referred me. (Those guys seem to be busy with infectious diseases these days.) This doctor seemed to know Lyme disease pretty well, and I told him about my very slow-going recovery from lingering tiredness, etc. He wanted me to take 4 more days of doxycycline even after several weeks delay from the last 10 day prescription, just to get me to the standard treatment; I wasn’t so sure that was necessary or good, but since he seemed to know his stuff I went along with it. However, I think the doxy wiped me out and kept me from being able to do the usual amount of outdoor work and indoor bicycle riding.
When I was recovering from the initial fevers, headaches, and pain of Lyme back in early November, taking the doxycycline gave me a decided and quick net improvement (even though I had trouble keeping it down on an empty stomach). So I didn’t notice the downside so much. But taking it when I was feeling pretty good (except for the lingering tiredness) seemed to have set me back — making me noticeably nauseous and weak.
That was my hypothesis, anyway. I took the last pill yesterday morning, and I was finally able to work longer and harder this afternoon, so that’s evidence that my hypothesis was correct. I hope to do even better tomorrow. We’ll see.
I hope your body is on the road to recovery in general. I really am very frightened of ticks and Lyme disease more than I’m frightened of Covid! I’m glad you’ve got good neighbors, too, who make the effort to return packages. It’ll be nice to know you’ve helped keep some people keep warm with the effort you’ve made creating that giant wood pile. ;)
Breathe, breathe. Nodirtyjokesnodirtyjokesnodirtyjokes…Filters, filters.
Okay, I’m good.