underrated dangers
Deep vein thrombosis:
How long-distance travels can mess
up your sojourn
By Lilian Okwili
I
n developing countries in Africa
today, billions of people will have
higher lifestyle expectations,
and new mobility aspirations
unlike our forefathers.
The evolving transport sector
is billed has having the potential to
improve the lives and livelihoods
of billions of people—their health,
their environment and their
quality of life, by inducing the
most austere sense of wanderlust,
taking you to the edge of the
world and back, evoking the same
spell of travelling with the land
of sophisticated and creative
civilisation.
But today it is stuck going
in the wrong direction, with
modern transport contributing
to rising numbers of deaths.
In the recent times, many
of us have witnessed travelling
being metamorphosing into
an escape where travellers
lay into lazy rhythm of cars,
buses, trains, planes and boda
bodas.
Today, many people have
despised the idea of walking
on foot even for very short
distances.
Gone are the days when
there was no means of
transport. Our grandparents
used to walk on foot covering
long distances. Then, there
were few diseases unlike
nowadays.
H u m a n b e i n g s h ave
become lazy to walk on foot
not knowing the risks of sitting
down for so long.
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“Walking is a man’s best medicine”, said
Hippocrates over 2,000 years ago – and a growing
body of scientific evidence suggests he wasn’t
wrong.
Walking is the best way to help you exercise
after you have spent the entire day seated. Our
habits are from house to the car then to office and
vice versa.
Sitting down in a confined place for long is the
same as travelling for long and they both have the
same effects.
Long distance travellers are at risk of getting
blood clots.
September 2017