The Reason I'm Strange

Today I learned that I am one of only 1.2 percent of American Adults.

Seriously.

According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, only 1.2 Percent of American adults can identify with EACH of the following:

--eat a healthy diet
--have a normal blood pressure
--exercise regularly
--don't smoke
--have a normal blood sugar level
--are at a healthy weight
--have healthy cholesterol levels

Statistically speaking, I guess I'm strange! (Some might say I'm strange even without statistics, but that's another story...)

It's sad that there aren't more people who can claim such strangeness.

The other day I was making a routine hospital call that required walking up a small incline to the main hospital entrance. Another woman arrived at about the same time and so we walked up to the entrance together and eventually even boarded the same elevator.

Once in the elevator the woman quipped, "that hill gets me every time...I guess I'm out of shape."

Her comment really caught me by surprise. I didn't even consider it a "hill," much less a measurement for conditioning. But out of shape she was, as evidenced not just by her comment, but also by her breathing. She's one of the 98.8 percent who cannot relate to everything on the above list.

It doesn't have to be this way.

1.2 percent is not a fixed number. That number can get bigger...and fast!

Be a part of it. Hop on the band wagon. Ride to the beat of a healthy heart moving healthy blood to healthy organs.

Such efforts won't necessarily make you a better person (only God does that!). But they can make for a higher quality of life, one with far less huffing and less puffing.

Praying for your own strangeness,
Kent