Tennessee Slips In physical condition Rank

asshole
suck
tits
pussy
bitch
jerk

OK, Tennessee, the doctor called. And the account is appealing grim.

You anticipate we don’t apprehension you cheating out for a smoke and a cheeseburger. We do. The doctor notices, too.

In fact, Tennessee, you smoke so vigorously, exercise so little and eat so abundant that you’ve alone from amount 46 endure year to 47 now on the 2008 account of America’s Health Rankings. Only three states are fatter and sicker than you – South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana.

There’s no prize for being near the bottom, Tennessee, so put down the chicken wing and pick up your reading glasses. Your weight is ballooning. Even more of you are smoking. And you haven’t aimed to do much about it.

For 19 years, America’s Health Rankings has provided an annual analysis of national health on a state-by-state basis. The longest-running report of its kind, America’s Health Rankings evaluates a historical and comprehensive set of health, environmental and socio-economic data to determine national health benchmarks and provide an annual ranking of the healthiest and least-healthy states.

Tennessee, you’re a stroke or a heart attack waiting to happen.

Now, Tennessee, maybe you could look to make some excuses. Nationwide, health is stagnating for the fourth year in a row.

During the 1990s, Americans started making healthier changes and health improved at an average rate of 1.5 percent a year. But improvements have remained flat for the past four years. Smoking, obesity and the uninsured are the nation’s three most-critical challenges, according to America’s Health Rankings out this week.

Among the most-troubling facts:

* Significant reductions in the prevalence of smoking have not occurred since the early 1990s and have virtually stalled in the past four years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the adverse health effects from smoking account for an estimated one out of every five deaths each year in the United States.

* The prevalence of obesity has more than doubled in the past 19 years. One in four Americans is considered obese, which puts them at increased risk for such health problems as heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer.

* Nearly 46 million Americans are currently uninsured, leaving them without adequate medical care for chronic conditions or preventive treatment that would help reduce future illnesses.

Tennessee’s biggest challenges are high tobacco use, with 24.3 percent of the population smoking; a high prevalence of obesity at 30.7 percent; and high levels of air pollution, with an average of 14.7 micrograms of fine particulate per cubic meter. Add to that a high violent crime rate at 753 offenses per 100,000 people and a high infant mortality rate at 9.5 deaths per 1,000 live births and you see why Tennessee is sliding down in the national rankings.

So what to do? Obviously, Tennessee, your two biggies are smoking, which grew 8 percent last year, and obesity, which is growing everywhere.

You must find ways to reduce the numbers of smokers in your state – by medical intervention, suggestion, pleading or program. One in five deaths is smoking-related and a quarter of Tennesseans are still lighting up. Those numbers must come down – for the health of your state and for the eventual associated medical costs of taking care of those sick smokers.

And as waistlines expand, so does the number of cases of Type 2 diabetes. Changes in diet and increasing exercise are the only ways to help save more lives in Tennessee and, again, reduce associated medical costs for people who have diabetes or other obesity-related illnesses.

Your report was pretty bad this year, Tennessee, but you are doing a better job of paying for health needs. Public health funding increased to $81 a person, from $72 last year. That’s a good step, albeit a small one.

So how to improve, Tennessee? You already know: Drop the smokes. Ditto on the cheeseburgers. Walk a bit more. Add a few vegetables. Skip the fried stuff.

Make small changes you can live with.

You don’t have to accept that “heart disease runs in your family.” Maybe that’s only because biscuits and gravy do, too