(ThyBlackMan.com) Negative health outcomes for Black men have been at a crisis point since the end of legalized slavery in America. It is no coincidence that as we came up from slavery we’ve gone down in health. The one enduring statistic by which to measure our overall health in America is our average life span. When compared to other ethnic and gender groups in America, it is painfully short: 67.8 years versus 74.7 years for White men and 71.8 years for Black women. Stated another way; the average White male lives 61,320 hours, 2,555 days, 364 weeks, 84 months longer than the average Black male.
Economic, environmental and social factors play equal parts in this reality. It is time, however, that we add our own individual responsibility and seek to expand our health consciousness. We can do in three ways.
Seek Individual Health
Our individual health as men of color leaves much to be desired. We have lost too many men in our communities to negative health outcomes due to sedentary living, bad eating habits and dysfunctional lifestyles. We must begin to seek wholeness and intentional balance. We must also develop ways to handle stress more effectively. Stress causes reduced sleep, ulcers, migraines, and lower back problems, among many other things.
Seeking physical health means eating a proper, well-balanced meal; sufficient cardio activity and exercise and also getting proper rest. Make it a point to sweat at least ten minutes a day by power walking, biking, jogging or swimming. Get and stay active.
Seek the Health of Loved Ones
It is said that the family that prays together stays together. Well, I’d like to suggest that the family that exercises together greatly improves their likelihood of staying together as a family unit. In fact, studies suggest that couples who workout together are more likely to work through their interpersonal conflicts and with greater success than those who do not exercise.
Seeking the health of the people we love and care about should flow from the consciousness created from our healthy living. Ultimately, if we are individually healthy but our mate or loved ones are unhealthy, then it distracts from the well-being we’ve achieved ourselves. Breast cancer and heart disease, for example, are killing our women with great alacrity.
We must also increase our awareness of the greater health issues happening in African American communities across the nation. Not only are breast cancer and heart disease killing our women, but overall obesity in the black community is occurring at epidemic levels and it’s beginning to negatively impact our children.
Seek the Health of the Ecology
How does the ecology factor into developing a well-rounded consciousness for black men? It’s mainly due to what we are witnessing in the environment on an almost daily basis. At this writing, Hurricane Harvey has left hundreds of thousands of people in Houston and along the coastal areas flooded and virtually homeless.
Harvey was an act of nature, but what we have done to the climate via emissions, manufacturing, drilling etc. has only aided and abetted these so-called ‘super-storms’. We must increase our awareness of the environment – how it is impacted by both nature and nurture – and get active to the extent our elected officials are paying attention to it.
After all, the people most susceptible to pollutants, compromised water supplies, coastal erosion, unchecked emissions etc. are our people. And we are often its first victims.
It is time we as Black men seek our greater individual health, the health of our loved ones and our communities and the health of the planet.
Staff Writer; W. Eric Croomes
This talented brother is a holistic lifestyle exercise expert and founder and executive coach of Infinite Strategies LLC, a multi-level coaching firm that develops and executes strategies for fitness training, youth achievement and lifestyle management. Eric is an author, fitness professional, holistic life coach and motivational speaker.
In October 2015, Eric released Life’s A Gym: Seven Fitness Principles to Get the Best of Both, which shows readers how to use exercise to attract a feeling of wellness, success and freedom (Infinite Strategies Coaching LLC, 2015) – http://www.infinitestrategiescoaching.com.