If you are planning to move to a new city in the United States then consider Naples as you destination. Why? As for the second consecutive year, it has won first place in the annual Gallup-Healthways survey for being the top U.S. metro city for overall health and well-being of its residents.
Naples, Florida beats other participants as its residents having the most positive outlook and healthiest lifestyle in the entire country. Barnstable Town, Massachusetts and Santa Cruz-Watsonville, California were there on the list of top six in 2016, came in second and third, respectively.
However, on the opposite end of the stick are cities which have the lowest amount of prosperity and these include Fort Smith, Arkansas-Oklahoma; Hickory, North Carolina; and Huntington, West Virginia.
Topeka, Kansas is in the fourth position in the lowest prosperity category and Canton, Ohio is in the fifth.
"It is a wonderful honor for Naples to be named the No. 1 community in the country for well-being and happiness for the second year in a row," said Bill Barnett, Mayor of Naples.
The Survey
The survey, known as State of American Well-Being: 2016 Community Well-Being Rankings does the study on 189 cities across the country. The poll has a scale of 0 to 100 where 0 represents the lowest category and 100 is the highest. Apart from the sense of purpose, the survey consists of four categories and the result is calculated on several parameters. The parameters are as follows:
Social
How people feel about their social lives and whether they have strong relationships and love in their lives.
Financial
How they manage their economic life to have less stress and more security.
Community
Whether they like the locality where they live; feel secured and support their community.
Physical
Whether they are physically active or not and have enough energy to do daily chores.
The assessments were done by telephone surveys of more than 354,400 U.S. adults from all the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
According to the result of the survey, Naples wins. The maximum number of residents eat healthily, have less stress, and have the lowest rate of depression. Moreover, they also support their community's well-being.
The Mayor of Naples stated that the Blue Zones Project has played an important role to help the community have a better life. Since 2015, the Blue Zones Project, based on the world travels of former National Geographic explorer Dan Buettner, is encouraging individuals, businesses, government agencies, and other organizations to make alterations in their daily habits to have better health and life. This movement consists of nine elements called Power Nine which are as follows:
Keeping your body active.
Having a purpose in life.
Having time to relax.
Having a healthy social life.
Giving priority to the loved ones first.
Taking part in religious ceremonies.
Less intake of alcohol.
Vegetarian/Vegan diet.
Stopping to eat after you are 80 percent full.
Photo: Kritsopher Avila | Flickr
