One recent newspaper headline caught my eye and prompted some self-righteous gloating: “Town ignores ‘unhealthiest city’ tag.” The story highlighted a town in another state that had landed dead last on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rankings of U.S. cities.

My gloating took a turn for the worse, however, on seeing our own Tulsa and Oklahoma City listed in another article. Self magazine recently produced ranking lists for the healthiest and unhealthiest cities for women, and Oklahoma didn’t fare well.

So what sorts of things did these rankings take into consideration?

The CDC study looked primarily at direct health measurements: such things as obesity rates, diabetes and hypertension rates, average diets, and percentages of the population who exercise regularly.

The Self rankings took these measures into consideration, as well as several other features of the cities themselves. These additional measures included things such as numbers of health clubs (good) and the numbers of fast-food restaurants (bad). It seems it’s the popularity of fast food that helped do Oklahoma in.

While it’s amusing to read these rankings and see how our cities and other cities across the country rate, there is also a real take-home message here. We can’t all pack up and move to Bethesda, Md., (the healthiest city for women, according to Self), but we can all make choices every day which reflect those made in places like Bethesda.

We can choose to eat more fruits and veggies instead of high-fat fast food. We can choose to exercise rather than spending that extra hour in front of the TV. We can choose not to smoke. We can choose to stop putting off that doctor’s appointment we’ve been promising to make for the annual exam we last had four years ago.

We also can become advocates for the place we live, promoting choices for the city as a whole which can make all of us healthier.

How about making changes to make Muskogee more bicycle friendly or more pedestrian friendly?

How about a bike/walk to work day?

Frankly, I sometimes get very tired of hearing about how the East and West coasts lead in all things. The American College of Sports Medicine, in their recent analysis, cites San Francisco as the fittest city in the United States. Who says that proximity to an ocean is necessary for a city to take the lead in health and fitness?

As you drive on past that fast-food restaurant, hold your head up proudly and say: “Take that, San Francisco and Bethesda!” Your heart and your city will thank you for it.

Dr. Janet Matthews is the OBGYN physician at The Women’s Center, a service of Muskogee Regional Medical Center, 687-3050. Send questions or suggestions for columns to janet.matthews @capellahealth.com.