The Nation's Health

Exercise: $4 per gallon gas is good for your health!

Gasoline is now approaching $4 per gallon in some parts of the U.S. But there's a silver lining in this dark cloud. In fact, I see this as a positive for your health.

How can higher gas prices possbily be good for health?

Imagine this trend continues: Fuel prices climb higher and higher. Driving your car will become increasingly more costly. What will be the fall-out?

Well, there will be a number of implications. But among the developments will be a broad impetus towards rejecting fuel-based sources of transportation. This may come as a shock to you, but humans legs were meant for walking!

Remember way back when, Mom would say "We need some milk"? In 1953, you wouldn't get in your car and zip to and from the supermarket. Instead, you would walk a quarter-mile, half-mile or more to the store. And you would carry your bags back. You might walk a mile or two to school and back. In 2006, this seems incomprehensible.

Higher fuel prices will prompt a gradual return to 1953--As transportation costs climb, your town may try and make it easier to walk as an alternative means of getting places.
Imagine that it was easy to walk three blocks to the grocery store, produce stand, work or school, walk along pleasant paths on the weekend, stroll to the home of friends. Drive or walk? Leave the car in the garage and save you and your family hundreds of dollars a month in gas bills.

In a few years, given the current fuel cost trends, there won't be a choice. But it will be in your favor for health.