By Dr. Mike Oyakhire
Depending on many factors, Physical activities of daily living, occupation and sports are capable of causing all kinds of damage to the muscles and skeleton of the body .
When a sports man or woman trains with poorly designed equipment, he will not only fail to win a medal, he might go down with very serious injuries and even die . On the other hand, office space , machines and chairs designed for the traditional Chinese populations are likely to pose serious problems for individuals from Germany
Also the strict and peculiar safety requirements in passenger aircraft cabin can not for any reasons be ignored. Obviously , it is safer for a morbidly obese individual(BMI over 40kg/m2) to be a passenger than the pilot in the cabin flying a Boeing 779 Aircraft.
Again if basketball players were to be selected from a population of men 5feet on the average, they would need to do twice as much jumping in order to even make contact with the ball
The number one swimming champion of the world; Michael Phleps continues to make and break world records because besides the swimming pool, he has access to, and trains with various categories of equipment .These are equipment designed in accordance with his unusual physical anthropometry(external body measurements)
In the industrialized world, health and safety of humans are given serious considerations in the design of Homes, Churches, Schools, offices, factories, Air craft , hostels, Cinema houses Stadia, Swimming pools , Military hard ware etc. They have come to understand that serious problems arise when design requirements of tools are ignored.
On the average ,the life span of a Nigerian male is about 45 years and for Nigerian woman , 47 years. The implication of this is that, any male or female Nigerian currently older than 50 years should take matters of health seriously. Any one below the age of fourteen is considered to be a child; at least for now. Above the age of 65 years, the Nigerian African is believed to have reached the peak of his capacity to perform given physical social and mental tasks . Clinically and precisely from research findings, and current understanding of human Anatomy, this is not absolutely correct. Generally , individuals from 15 to 65 years are regarded as the productive age group. The collective and individual ability of persons and workers in this group to give their best depends on how physically sound they are, the tools at their disposal and the working environment. A major reason for rapid decline in the ability of old adults in the low socioeconomic class to perform certain tasks is the scarcity of opportunities; they are just not there. After retirement, pension funds are stolen and many of them go back to the villages where the only option is low scale farming with hoes and cutlasses that cause them to die early.
