Exercise for the Earth

I was listening to public radio the other day, and they were talking about high blood pressure.  It got me thinking about the environmental impact of having poor health- high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc. 

If you need to be on medications, obviously there is a certain amount of resources and energy used to create pills, and then all the packaging- the bottle, the paper bag it's put in, the print out of information.  And there was also recently a report that came out about medications in drinking water.  Blood pressure and cholesterol meds weren't mentioned there,  but presumably they pass into the water too, which further increases the environmental impact.

Now, I am not saying people shouldn't take prescribed pills.  But we already know that exercise in the form of walking or biking for transportation helps the environment.  I'm wondering how else can exercise save the Earth?  Can exercising decrease our need for medications, which saves resources and helps keep our drinking water clean?  Are there other advantages?

One other benefit is that if you're out exercising, you're not doing other activities that would involve consuming energy (i.e. watching TV, driving around, sitting on the computer, etc.).  Particularly if you use your commute as exercise, like biking/walking to work, or walking to public transportation.  I know I save about 150 miles of driving per week by biking/mopeding to work.  That's a pretty significant emissions reduction.

Dumping meds into the toilet is definitely not a good thing.  A lot of different meds are what are known as endocrine disruptors which mimic hormones like estrogen.  These disruptors (even at very low doses) can really wreak havoc on the reproductive systems of amphibians (which may indicate future effects in humans).  But more on that later...

In terms of exercise....here's an article that talks a bit more about what Dana1981 mentioned.  From EcoWorldly:

If you are obese, you are probably more responsible for global warming than you ever thought. And your contribution to global warming is really serious and very, very significant because 400,000,000 of you are obese, a newly published research finding claims!

Your often too generous uptake of food and fuel for transport is actually placing a great strain on already depleting world resources, according to some British researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

This may be too warm to handle… The finding adds that what compounds the weighty problem is that obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, adding to food shortages and higher energy prices.

By 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese, according to current World Health Organization (WHO) projections.

In the research paper published today in The Lancet, UK’s independent general medical journal, Phil Edwards PhD, Lecturer in Statistics and Ian Roberts PhD, Professor of Epidemiology say obese people contribute to global warming by walking or cycling less, fueling the demand for oil whose production process and usage we all know in relation to global warming.

[For the whole post, head on over here.]

That's a really interesting article, stins.

The article feels a little unfair though- I don't know that everyone who is overweight and obese drives their cars more than thin people (therefore walking less) and eats massive quantities of food.  I am sure there are some, maybe many, but ouch.  Plus what about all those skinny folks with high metabolisms that also pack it away?  And fear walking?  Maybe instead of looking at this in terms of weight, the focus should remain on lifestyle.

That said, in addition to the over-eaters and under-walkers, there are the over-eat-outers.  Think of all the extra packaging used for take out food.  All the napkins drive through windows shove into the paper bag holding your food.  The disposable utensils.  And if you eat at a fast food place, there never is any recycling.

Oh boy when that article came out there was a pretty big hubub over in the Yahoo Answers Environment section.  The global warming 'skeptics' were just outraged - "now you're blaming global warming on fat people?!?!".

To me it's just no-brainer simple logic.  If you're heavier, it requires more energy to move you around.  You also generally consume more food (although that's not universally true, as nitedreamer points out), which again means more energy and resources devoted to you.  And generally speaking, an overweight person is probably less likely to use self-propulsion to transport himself around (I know when I'm biking, I rarely see overweight people on the bike paths), because again, it takes more energy to move yourself around if you weigh more.  So not only does it require more energy, but that energy is more likely to come from fossil fuels.

Anyway, I don't want to come off sounding like "fat people suck".  My point is just that obesity is an issue not just with regard to health, but also the environment.

Being over weight does not mean you eat more, and it doesn't mean that you don't exercise.

It's not like all over weight people drive a Form F-150 and everyone else drives a Geo Metro. I'm going off a Yahoo Answers page, but the average car weighs 3,500 pounds. Lets say the average person is 30 pounds over weight. So that is 0.85% of the weight of the car. I suspect that other factors such as tire pressure, the crap you have lying around in your boot, the grade of fuel you run, and not to mention how you drive your vehicle all have a much greater impact how much energy you use.

As for exercise... how many people work out in an air conditioned gym on electrical equipment? What about people who drive to the gym/pool, or drive somewhere and then walk or bike? The modal share of self propelled transportation for commuting is tiny in most cities anyway.

I'm overweight. I'm also a vegetarian. Am I 'worse' for the environment just because I am over weight?

I think articles like that just give all environmentalists a bad name. 

This is why I was careful to say things like "generally speaking" and "not universally true".  I understand that it's a sore subject, but I'm just making a scientific point.

If you're overweight and still exercise and eat well etc., that's great.  As a general rule, that's not the case for overweight people.  It's just physics.

The chiropractor, where I work, had this info printed up and I thought it was interesting for this thread.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23503485

Pharmaceuticals lurking in U.S. drinking water

AP probe found traces of meds in water supplies of 41 million Americans

Absolutely, I agree environmental impacts have made us the most diseased species on the face of the planet.  Although excercise cannot cure everything nor prevent it, our understanding of the way food interacts with our bodies and what lessening our chemical exposure can do for our health is just starting to surface.

As for medication, in Canada they have started a public campaign to use less medication or only use it when needed.  One of the major pharma products that show up in our water is actually hormones from women's birth control, it is actually changing the sex of fish!  Another culprit is Penicillin or it's counterparts which is WAY overperscribed.

Only taking medication when it's absolutely neccesary is a big step towards solving this problem, but in order to do that people need to gain better understanding of the body's natural healing process and also look into natural treatments which are readily available for all sorts of ailments.

Will excerise cure the world?  No but, a combination of the above may very well help.

As a person in the medical field, I agree that diet and exercise can eliminate the need for a lot of medications.  It wouldn't stop the need for all medicine no matter how much we may try.  The technology is so great now that we can prevent a lot of problems with drugs these days.

That being said....if our society would consume less of everything (food, water, energy) we would be a heathier society overall. 

I see tons and tons of patients that complain about taking the medicine but don't do any lifestyle changes to try to improve their overall health.  We all seem to want someone or something else to fix all out troubles.  Not going to happen!!