As someone who's currently in a battle with pneumonia (a fight I hope I'm winning by the time you read this), I was interested when something called America's Health Rankings put out a survey of not just how Tennessee is doing, but Monroe County also.

Overall, Tennessee is about where you'd expect. We rank 48th for sedentary lifestyle, 47th for being victims of violent crime (and suffering injury, I assume) and 44th for cases of diabetes. On the plus side, we rank first in NOT binge drinking, and are doing pretty well in terms of access to primary care physicians (20th) and per capital public health funding (21st).

County wise, well, if I'm understanding what I'm reading here, we're well within the top 50 percent of the state, ranking 36th out of 95 counties. It would appear that of the 45,000 or so people we have in Monroe County, about 9,500 of us can expect to die before we're supposed to.

That's higher than the overall state rate of just under 9,100 and way above the national rate of about 5,500.

We also have about five poor physical health days a year and just over three bad mental health days per year. Depending on who you are, those numbers probably seem incredibly low or rather high. I've been feeling bad for close to three weeks now, but before that it had literally been years since I'd felt bad enough to say, "You know what? I think I'll spend the day in the recliner under a blanket." Maybe it evened out.

As for poor mental health days, 3.3 per year seems extremely low. There's always something to make us depressed. Maybe they're talking about severe depression. The kind that makes you curl up in a ball and demand to know why you still exist. It does seem like three of them a year would be more than enough.

When it comes to healthy behavior, we pretty much stink on ice. An estimated 37 percent of us smoke (in this day and age!), which is way above the state rate of 24 percent and pretty much crushes the national average of 14 percent.

Thirty four percent of us are obese, which is just above the state average of 34 percent and a little higher than the national average of 25 percent. Tying into that number, 32 percent of us never get any physical exercise, at least nothing more than walking from house to car and vice versa. Statewide, 30 percent of us are inactive, while nationally it's 21 percent.

Here's a number that gave me pause. Only 8 percent of us are considered heavy drinkers in Monroe County. Now, granted, I have no interest in alcohol, and most of the people I know don't have much interest in alcohol (we seek our own in certain things), but I've known a lot of drunks and 8 percent seems kind of low.

Perhaps tying into that number, it's expected that about 28 of us will die in car wrecks. Considering some years we can have 20 people die in car wrecks, and the next year have six, that seems like a very random number. I don't put much stock in it.

Nineteen percent of us are uninsured, which I found surprising. I thought it'd be much higher, but then I remembered TennCare, not to mention all the Medicare/Medicaid stuff.

There is one primary care physician (the person you see for regular checkups and to find out why that cough won't go away) for every 2,686 of us, which would go a long way to explain why you never see a poor doctor. Just think about all those people paying an average of $150 to see their doctor and you can perhaps understand why some people just keep on coughing instead of trying to get treated.

There were some non-health numbers listed, including 84 percent of us being high school graduates (a little higher than the state average of 79 percent) and 36 percent having some college. An estimated 31 percent of children live in poverty in Monroe County while 28 percent live in singe-parent households. These all contribute to our health state, but that's a subject for another time.

And finally, in a number that probably explains everything, an estimated 52 percent of us eat fast food on a regular basis. Grease and fat, always good for a healthy diet!

michael.thomason@advocateanddemocrat.com | 442-4575