How Healthy Are Spaulding Teachers?

It is common for many adults these days to get on the younger generation’s health habits. Many complain about how they are always drinking energy drinks, never getting enough sleep and always sitting in front of a screen rather than going outside. For many of us in the younger generation, that may be true; however, the older generations that make up Spaulding’s faculty and staff certainly can’t be living as healthy of a lifestyle as they expect us to, right?

To start, this is a very controversial topic, with almost no complete right answer. No one can perfectly define what makes a person physically healthy or not. However, the most commonly accepted measures of health include environment, diet, time spent exercising, hours of sleep and certain habits (smoking, drinking, etc). A normal healthy adult in the United States would live in a quiet suburb, eat a balanced diet with 2-3 meals per day, exercise at least two days a week, sleep at least 7 hours and have limited unhealthy habits. With this base for health being set, I asked 15 teachers questions on these factors, and the results were rather shocking.

Of the 15 teachers interviewed, a whopping 14 can be considered to be living in above average health. That is 81% higher than the American population as a whole! What makes our teachers so healthy? Is it the challenges they have with each other for who can get the most steps in? The healthy food the school cafeteria makes? Maybe because they teach in one of the healthiest states in the union? Or could these teachers simply be lying about their health stats. Nonetheless, the data has spoken. To add to the data, the Spaulding teachers interviewed on average sleep 7.1 hours a night and exercise 3.6 days a week, most likely much more than the average Spaulding Student.

Though many reading this may simply refuse to look at the data as valid, the data states that our teachers are in fact very healthy, with numbers all around much better than the average American. Perhaps we all have something to learn from our teachers other than just the subject they teach. Maybe those silly fitbit challenges actually work. Overall, however, it is a great thing that Spaulding’s teachers are very healthy, as it means they will be able to teach here for a very, very long time.

Article by Josh Durand