I opened up my email this morning and saw this story about bloggers who are blogging themselves to death. “Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.”
I was disturbed at this trend in how we are becoming such a slave to the PC and Internet that we are willing to die for our work. Not only that but die at an early age. This got me thinking about what other trends in health are on the rise over just the course of a decade or so. According to National Center for Health Statistics,and National Vital Statistics Reports between 1999 and 2001 the leading six causes of death due to diet and inactivity were heart disease,cancer, stroke,diabetes,kidney disease, and hypertension.Further in a 2000assessment people who led sedentary lives had 23.2 days in a 30 day time period where they felt healthy. They reported 3.9 days out of the month were they felt sad, blue or depressed and 8.1 days having trouble sleeping.”Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.” These numbersdefinitely support on some level the New York post’s information regarding blogging till you drop.
I looked into some other statistics and what I found was just more confirmation that our sedentary lifestyles are not helping us but hurting us instead. In the most recent study I could find from the CDC I found this:
The percentage of adults who spent most of their day sitting increased from 36.8% in 2000 to 39.9% in 2005. A similar increase was seen among both men and women, adults aged 25 years and over, and non-Hispanic white adults. Overall, the percentage of adults who spent most of their day standing or walking decreased between 2000 and 2005. A similar decrease was seen among adults aged 65 years and over and non-Hispanic white adults.
Kansas Jumped from 5% reporting unhealthy days of more than 14 days to 9% from 1993 to 2006
Kansas also jumped from 6.5% to 9.1% reporting mentally unhealthy days of more than 14 days to 1993 to 2006
Overall in Kansas there has been an increase of 4 days to 5.4 days of being physically or mentally unhealthy.
Between 1998 and 2006 Kansas reported fair or poor self rated health initially in 1993 of 12.0 to 17.3 in 2006
These numbers are from
Health, United States an annual report on trends in health statistics.
On the plus side smoking has decreased for men and women nationally with smoking by men at 50% in 1965 to just under 30% in 2005 and just over 30% in women to about 20% within the same time frame. Even smoking by pregnant mothers declined from 20% in 1995 to 10% in 2005
Between 1999 to 2004 adults between 18 and 44 eat 1 to 3 meals out at a rate of just over 50% while they eat 4 or more meals out about 35% of the time
Overweight including obese has risen from 45% to 70% for the 20 to 74 yr old age group between 1960 to 2004
Arthritis/musculoskeletal, heart/circulatory, mental illness, diabetes are the top 4 conditions reported between 2004 to 2005 that cause activity limitations
Last but not least Antidepressant use by men increase from about 3% between 1988 to 1994 to about 7% between 1992 to 2002 and by women from about 4% between 1988 to 1994 to about 13% between 1999 to 2002
So you can see some pretty disturbing trends here. I love to blog and at the moment I am not getting paid huge bucks to blog, but I can’t see running my health into the ground to get a jump on the competition. I am in bed no later than 12:30 each night with the rare exception that I am working on a design, I keep healthy foods around to snack on like whole wheat bread for peanut butter and jelly sandwich’s , carrots, grapes, bananas, yogurt, skim milk, diet soda just to name a few. I make sure I get at least 30 min of fairly intense activity about every other day. At the moment that is taking the form of house work and playing out doors with my kid. I too am on antidepressants so I really have to work at keeping my body in good shape so the antidepressants can properly do there job.
You can see why now is it is crucial to focus on preventative health measures instead of treatment. Because in the case of the bloggers who blogged themselves ragged their deaths could have been prevented if in fact their sedentary lifestyles contributed to the cause of their deaths, in which reading this article it appears that it did.
Share This
