Health News
Life in the country not so healthy, Australian survey shows
Dec 19, 2011, 3:06 GMT
Sydney - Australian city folk often daydream about what they call a sea-change or a tree-change: a shift to a quiet place on the coast or a country town where you can barely see the houses for the trees.
They imagine that with clean air and wide open spaces they will be healthier and live longer. However, it's not like that - as a recent report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics has shown.
Those outside the big cities are 15 per cent more likely to have high blood pressure, 16 per cent more likely to have a psychological problem, 20 per cent more likely to have asthma, 23 per cent more likely to have back pain and 27 per cent more likely to be deaf. And the further from the cities the worse it gets.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released a report recently that found mortality rates in regional areas for chronic diseases were 8-per-cent higher than in the city and up to 80-per-cent higher in very remote areas.
People in rural areas drive more and have more car crashes. They drink more and smoke more. Oddly enough, they also exercise less.
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