Burn1911

Get a dog I walk an hour and a half a day - granted I am lucky I have that time to spare!!

I do have to drive to our nearest trail which is about 5 mins... but the trails are lovely and wide and long, we have tons of hiking here as well, and lots of horse trails, bike trails, parks, lakes etc...

The interesting thing is - you NEVER see hardly anyone on these trails, and if you do it is always the same people!! I think everyone just thinks I am that crazy English lady that walks her dogs come rain or shine!!

IMO I think in general people are more lazy over here, the convenience of life etc... it always makes me laugh how many people drive to the gym to walk on a treadmill when the weather is glorious and the gym is right next to a walking trail, people like what they know I guess!

Giantaxe

I'm always shocked when I go to the east coast or the south and see the numbers of really obese people there. I think some of it is related to climate too; here the weather's generally conducive to hiking, whereas in a lot of the US that isn't the case for good chunks of the year.

N1cky

No, but thats true in the UK too and plenty of people get out and walk.

I used to love walking my dog at night, wrapped up against the cold, in the rain, but it always amazed me how many other people were out too.

Pistolpete2

New York Times article MAPPING THE NATION's WELL-BEING dated March 5th, shows the heaviest obesity (well in excess of 30% of the population) in a line from Pennsylvania through to northern Louisiana and Texas, incl. West Virginia, Kentucky, western Mississippi and southern Alabama. Also, southern Georgia and southern parts of North and South Carolina.

San Francisco is only 14% obese.

SultanOfSwing

I agree that walking has a lot to do with it. I'm a bit of a fatty anyway, but I ate pretty much the same in the UK as I do here, but back home I walked so much more every day just getting to and from work, by car it was a mile to and from the car park and when I got the train it was 0.5 mile to the station from home, then 1 mile from station to work when I got into town.

So there was between 2-3 miles walked every day without even trying. I have to go out of my way to be able to walk now but where we moved to has more residential streets that I can wander around with the baby if I so desire. I do notice when I go out on my bike though that it's always the same people out that I see!

Yorkieabroad

I know, me too - we very rarely changed our walking habits due to weather in the UK. Unfortunately my dog here is a true Southerner and "doesn't do" rain.....she must have a cast iron bladder as she slams all 4 anchors firmly on and refuses to go over the doorstep if there is a hint of rain.

Lothianlad

1 One of the advantages of living in a geographically small island nation where, by American standards, nowhere is really far from anywhere else. Twenty miles is quite some distance away by our reckoning, not really local at all in many case, swith quite a lot of variety packed into those twenty miles or so. Every town and city, even in rural areas, offer full medical facilities in the local NHS hospitals, all operating under the auspices of the local NHS Trusts. Even the smaller places have small local hospitals (previously known as "cottage hospitals") and/or clinics again under the NHS Trust coverage, which offer a range of treatment facilities of a more minor nature - more serious cases are taken to the larger hospitals in the area. All hospials, large or small, have A & E departments (Accident and Emergency) to which all emergency cases - ie injuries resulting from accidents or incidents of any kind - are taken for immediate attention and treatment on the spot. Free of charge, even for non residents of the UK - at the monent at least - this may well change in the very near future. Most Brits do not like the idea of Health Tourism to the UK, for understandable reasons.

Even so, the main centres of population here in the UK contain many of the more specialised medical treatment centres, very large hospitals, often teaching hospitals as well, where the more urgent cases involving the more complex medical conditions are treated - eg liver transplants and the like. Edinburgh, naturally enough, is one such centre. Even so, nobody here in the UK would have to travel 120 miles to get to one of these centres apart, perhaps, patients living in the remote parts of the Western Islands and Highlands of Scotland.

(2) Mediocre and substandard medical practitioners? - most Brits would be pretty much gobsmacked to come across that sort of situation, to be honest with you here.

(3) The distance thing again, I suppose. There's something to be said about the convenience of living in a densely populated, compact little island nation, no single part of which is more than seventy miles away from tidal water and the length of which you can casually drive along from one end to the other, top to bottom, Land's End to John o'Groats, in about 16 hours at regular speed and barring any holdups at all - something which really is a rare, if not impossible, event at the best of times in the UK no matter how long or short the road journey.

4 Absolutely spot on, pal.

robin1234

Tell me about it.

us4now

Yes, the walking thing gets me too. Here you have to 'go for a walk' specifically to exercise. Whereas in UK you walked to the school or the store or the swimming pool or the pub etc So in other words it was part of your day, the walk was a means of getting somewhere, not the goal itself.

And here I sometimes feel a bit daft just walking round my subdivision (I have no dog as an excuse) I do like walking in the local conservation area with a friend thiough, we try to do that once a week.

taffie77

Minnesota is very much an outdoors state - no matter which season it is. Go to any of the lakes in the summer and it is crowded with people walking, running, cycling, doing yoga (and no matter where you live, there is a lake within spitting distance). Even in the winter people seem to make the effort to get out and walk, skate, ski, snow shoe, and snow mobile (in my husband and his friends' case, from bar to bar ).

However, it would still be very difficult to manage without a car, just because things are spread out - the supermarket, my footy club, etc. People certainly seem more willing to drive further to do recreational stuff.

Sally Redux

I have pretty much ground to a halt over here.

cluedweasel

Because there isn't a unified medical record system. Back in the UK through the 70s, 80s and 90s, my record pack followed me from Scotland to London to Nottingham to Huntingdon to Malborough without a problem. My records here couldn't get from my old doc to my new one 3 blocks away.
As for EMR helping, I wouldn't be so sure. My current client is insisting on a system no one else in the state uses. Their main partners in town use 4 different systems. Now I've got to find a way of getting them to all "talk" to each other. Oh joy.

meauxna

OT, but this just rips me up! It's not like it is a secret that electronic records are going to be the wave of the future. And Oregon is poised to take advantage of that and get some open source products going... Why they all want to reinvent the wheel I will never know!
On the plus side for you, guaranteed employment I guess.

Giantaxe

And if you go and see a specialist he often has no clue as to your medical history. Kaiser is an honourable exception to this though.

GeoffM

The NHS has a unified medical record system? After a visit to my hospital consultant he types/dictates a letter (up to a month after the appointment), the receptionist stuffs it in an envelope and posts it (through Royal Mail). A couple of days later it turns up at my GP's office a mile away. A receptionist opens the envelope, digitally scans the letter (as a bitmap, not OCR), saves it into my medical record, and shreds the paper copy. One letter took so long to get through the system that the GP refused a repeat prescription because he hadn't had the authorisation from the hospital consultant, which caused me no end of hassle to sort out.

Gotta love Government-designed IT systems.