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Global Issues: Obesity, Inactivity, and Water-Crisis

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Global Issues: Obesity, Inactivity, and Water-Crisis
Health is a precious gift that needs to be cherished. Unfortunately, there are three global issues that are destroying people’s health and killing them. These health concerns include inactivity, obesity and lack of safe drinking water. The positive side of these issues is the fact that they are all preventable through making the right decisions and taking action.
Due to higher trends of sedentary lifestyles, inactivity has become one of the critical current global issues. Inactivity is defined as a failure to meet the daily minimum physical requirement of moderate exercise. According to New York Times, worldwide, 31.1% of adults are inactive, from which 43.4% of North America, 34.8% of Europe, 30% of Russia, 30% of the Middle East, and 27% African. Based on these percentages, it is reasonable to assume that the wealthy the region is, the more inactive it is likely to be. Sedentary lifestyles have recently been linked to many health issues such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, colon cancer and breast cancer. As stated in the New York Times, globally, around 5.3 million people die from health issues that are related to physical inactivity; however comparatively, 5.1 million people die due to health concerns that are related to smoking. It is unfortunate that people do not understand the magnitude of the importance of physical activity due to the fact that inactivity is as deadly as smoking cigarettes. In the United States, inactivity level is the highest in the world, which makes it an undeniable concern. The average American lifestyle consists of driving to work, sitting at a desk all day, then sitting in front of a computer or a TV screen until falling asleep. The common trend of this routine is a lot of sitting and very little exercise. Although, the good news is that health issues correlated with inactivity can be easily prevented by meeting the minimum exercise requirement, which is a twenty-minute walk per day. Additionally, as for worldwide



Cited: "How does safe water impact global health?" WHO. 19 Sept. 2012 <http://www.who.int/features/qa/70/en/index.html>. "Obesity and overweight." WHO. 19 Sept. 2012 <http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/>. "The Couch Potato Goes Global." Well. 19 Sept. 2012 <http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/the-couch-potato-goes-global/>. "Water-related diseases." WHO. 19 Sept. 2012 <http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/diseases/malnutrition/en/>. "Water, sanitation and hygiene." WHO. 19 Sept. 2012 <http://www.who.int/gho/phe/water_sanitation/en/index.html>.

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