I spend some time traveling earlier this week. Actually I spent a lot more time traveling than I planned due to bad weather conditions impacting flights coming into and going out of the Charlotte, NC airport. By the way, I would like to acknowledge the women who work in the Charlotte airport restrooms as among the friendliest people I've ever encountered in any airport; in fact, as a group, they are the friendliest people I've ever encountered working in any ladies' restroom. The photo is actually from a February trip to Akron taken through the window of the Cleveland airport. I think it was about 10 degrees that day. On most if not all legs of the flight, I encountered or observed people who had mobility limitations. Some were obvious and were also obviously older adults. Many, however were a little more surprising. The more time I spent in and out of planes and airports, the more I started to notice people who could walk slowly without effort but had a lot of problems with activity that required more 'nimbleness,' like sitting, maneuvering a bag down a plane, aisle, moving across the row to a center or window seat, getting up out of a seat (I thought one person behind me was going to pull my seat out of the ground as she grasped it to help pull herself upright), turning, reaching up to put a bag in or take one out of the overhead compartment, and essentially any type of movement beyond simple unburdened walking in a (sort of) straight line.
As a person with a lot of interest in the health benefits of physical activity through the lifespan, and in particular in adults, seeing these repeated demonstrations of lack of mobility and struggles with basic types of movement was really disturbing to me. And most of the people I observed did not appear to be all that old - maybe around the middle to late middle aged decades of the 40s and 50s, with a couple of very heavy people in the 30s or younger included in this group. As the title of this post suggests, I'm beginning to form a mental picture/description of people who are probably not categorized as having disability (yet) but have limited their physical activity so much (get in the car, drive to work, sit, drive home, sit more, sit while eating, sit on the weekends, sit at the movies, sit at sporting events, sit in front of the TV/computer, sit, sit, sit) that their ability is diminishing as well. I equate this to the alcoholic who otherwise keeps his/her life together but is one critical incident away from getting out of control. Similarly, while many people can and do shape their lives around very limited movement, a problem arises when it is necessary to do something unusual - ranging from scooting sideways into a window seat on a plane, all the way to the need to walk down the street for food or water because weather or other conditions prevent car travel. As a person who lived through a blizzard in the late 70s and a hurricane in the middle 00s, I know the value of being able to ambulate with your own two legs and feet. Increasingly, however, I fear there are more and more people who literally could not walk down the street if their lives depended upon it. This is a huge health concern that's going to create serious problems during the next 5-15 years, I fear and the only prevention is to increase daily participation in physical activity.
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AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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