I was at the grocery store, and an older lady was riding one of those cheap-looking hover board type contraptions inside the store - except that there was a post, and seat attached to it. She was whizzing all over the place on it with ease and grace. It was an excellent sight.
I was in a country other than the United States and I saw an older lady run to catch a bus. She was easily 65, maybe 70. It was neither interesting nor noteworthy to any of the other (swiss) people on the street with her.
Walking is the universal medicine and we live with an enormous burden of health, fitness and longevity problems (including obesity, diabetes, "lower back problems", knee and hip issues, etc.) due to the car culture that we live in and the related near refusal to walk anywhere.
No, this was not an excellent sight - it's the sign of a sick society that will do anything to avoid the simple, free and easy remedy to almost all of their problems.
A biological analog would be Type II. You consume too much glucose, you develop insulin resistance, you take insulin, which makes your insulin resistance worse, and so on. The problem there too, is diet and exercise.
I know you’re coming from a good place, but I think it’s misguided.
I'm not sure how you get that from anything I said. I'm saying that 'lol, yanquis are fat' is not a sensible response to some random story about a person making good use of assistive technologies. It seems like a totally unnecessary distraction that comes from not-a-good place.
It took me years to recover from being bedridden for 3.5 months. Recovery involved enormous amounts of walking, many hours a day, in fact, for long periods.
The easy answer may get you to the grocery store, but it won't restore function.
The rest of your post, I generally agree with - I walk, or ride a bike everywhere. It's been a great while since I've owned a car - best decision of my life was to get rid of it, and I agree that walking is excellent exercise that we all should try to do more. I can only encourage others to try to do the same.
As for my other post—like all comedy, not everyone is going to like every joke. It amuses me that some people think that because they didn't recognise the comedy genius (perhaps it wasn't clever enough) their reaction is to get the endorphins hit that comes from hitting the down-vote button.
Personally I'm glad that I was able to contribute to the regulation of other people's brain chemistry. Hopefully I can make more people feel better about themselves with this post too. Press that button, people!
Definitely an antidote to making them “cool”.