Health
The Kuna have been shown to have a low average blood pressure (BP, 110/70 mm Hg), and, do not experience the age-related increase in blood pressure that is common in Western society (Hollenberg et al. 1997). More importantly, death rates from cardiovascular disease and cancer, the #1 and #2 causes of death in the US are rare in the Kuna. Between 2000 to 2004, on the mainland of Panama, Bayard et al. (2007) reported that for every 100,000 residents, 83 died from cardiovascular disease (CVD), and 68 died from cancer. In contrast, per 100,000 Kuna, these death rates were 9 for CVD and 4 for cancer. One possible explanation for the improved health of the Kuna, relative to their mainland Panamanian counterparts is that the Kuna drink 30-40 oz. of flavanol-rich cocoa per day (http://voices.yahoo.com/kuna-cocoa-optimal-way-decrease-blood-pressure-11583580.html?cat=70).
Read more about this topic: Kuna People
Famous quotes containing the word health:
“Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upwards towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Even though I had let them choose their own socks since babyhood, I was only beginning to learn to trust their adult judgment.. . . I had a sensation very much like the moment in an airplane when you realize that even if you stop holding the plane up by gripping the arms of your seat until your knuckles show white, the plane will stay up by itself. . . . To detach myself from my children . . . I had to achieve a condition which might be called loving objectivity.”
—Anonymous Parent of Adult Children. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)
“The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)