Be Well, Be Happy

"Wherever you go...there you are."

It's so true. I once chatted with an elderly lifelong smoker who had cancer and emphysema in his remaining lung plus diabetes, and heart problems. "I'm dying because I smoke," he gasped. "Seventy years of smoking. I can't quit."

Most of us don't "make" health decisions. We traipse through life trying to make ends meet, keep the spouse from blowing up, please the boss, and survive. When we're adolescents, we start wolfing down thousands of calories of worthless food. We pour enough caffeine into our system to energize a freight train. Even if we manage to stay off serious drugs and get married or shack up, we end up sleeping two or three hours one night and fourteen the next. We yell at the kids. We get irritated by our spouse or live-in. We overeat, underexercise, and overreact when things get rough.

As a result, lifestyle-related diseases take their toll. But there's an encouraging word here as well. I couldn't find up-to-the-minute data, but The American Heart Association has a statistical update for the 10 years from 1991 to 2001.

For virtually every state, the death rate from coronary heart disease, stroke, and all cardiovascular disease has declined. The average decline in deaths from cardiovascular disease for all states over those ten years is 18.8 percent.

This is a result of thousands of posters, videos, classes, news reports, interviews, Web coverage, and much more.

You can choose a healthier lifestyle. You can encourage others to do so. You can live healthy longer.