Work and Leisure

Chapter 10Leisure and HealthSeppo E. Iso-Ahola and Roger C. MannellIntroductionHealth is the most valued commodity, and it is shown in many ways, as inNew Year greetings in which people wish their friends and relatives healthand happiness. One often hears people saying that nothing matters more thanhealth, and they proclaim you cannot buy health and happiness. In addition,claiming to have good health is often a psychological safety valve, a compensationmechanism for disappointments and failures in other spheres of life,such as finances: ‘I don’t have a lot of money and cannot do the things richpeople do, but I am healthy’. Given this perceived importance of health, whatdo people do to achieve or maintain it? An answer seems to be: very little. Forexample, while the health benefits of exercise are well documented and widelytrumpeted in the mass media, 78% of Americans are sedentary (Blair 1993).In other words, by not exercising regularly, Americans are significantlyincreasing their risk of premature mortality due to heart disease, stroke andcancer. Similarly, about 25% of people smoke even though the health hazardsof smoking are well established and known. Further, many people drinkalcohol excessively and have poor diets. In fact, experts now attribute theepidemic of diabetes to the typical American diet: soft drinks, white rice,white bread, and french fries.Why this contradiction of knowing about the importance of health on onehand and doing little for it or even engaging in at-risk health behaviours onthe other? While there is no unequivocal answer to this question, there seemto be two ironies with respect to this issue. First, people take health forgranted, even as an entitlement. Because 97% of people are born healthy, theymay view health as a birthright and pay attention to it only when remindedabout it, for example, when falling ill or when seeing friends struggle withvarious illnesses. The second irony is that health is largely controllable,determined mainly by our own actions and behaviours, in other words, howwe live our daily lives. It is estimated that over 80% of the factors determininghealth have nothing to do with medical treatment. For some years now, of theten leading causes of death before age 65, lifestyle is estimated to account for