1000 Flowers for the Planet - #359 Have Regular Health Checkups
Looking after your health may sound like an obvious thing to
do, but if you take a look around at most western societies you might want to
acknowledge that most of us do not attend to our health as well as we
should/could. Here’s the scenario: by eating poorly, being overweight and not
exercising, eventually the body buckles under the strain and begins to suffer.
It could react with diabetes, heart conditions, high blood pressure,
cholesterol, back injuries, foot and knee problems – the list is endless. This
means that eventually people will need some sort of medical intervention.
Medical intervention uses a LOT of resources. Operations create a lot of waste
that goes into landfill or is biomedical waste (where does that even go?? I’ll have to make a Flower for that one). Hospital
stays generate huge amounts of waste: fresh gloves used every time a nurse
touches a patient are then tossed; every time a patient is transported the
vehicle uses fuel and all the ‘linen’ on the gurney is thrown away – one for
every person transported; gowns worn when entering rooms of infectious patients
are tossed after one use; hospitals use many single use items that are then
tossed into landfill; medications don’t disappear when you swallow them, as the
chemicals still go through your system and leave it along with the rest of your
waste; hospitals have to set up huge resource guzzling buildings that use
energy and they have to administer everything with paperwork and management,
where even more resources are gobbled up. The picture is a HUGE one. These are
only a few examples.
By simply ensuring you have regular health checkups and
remaining on top of any health issues you may come across, you can prevent
disease and mechanical problems from getting out of control. This has the
two-sided effect of giving you a happy, healthy life and keeping you from
contributing to a resource guzzling part of our society.
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