Initiated by Coursera's "Easing the Burden of Obesity, Diabetes, and Cardiovascular disease" assignment
Again, some minor formatting issues that didn't get resolved when copying and pasting from MS Word to this blog...
Background
The
purpose of this is to help the target
audience be healthier through educational awareness of their unhealthy
condition, ideas toward a healthier condition, and prevention of their
potential unhealthy conditions in the (long-term) future.
My
target audience has the more easily diagnosed,
gross health problem of “over-weight”, or obesity, with (chronic) disease
potentials that include co-diseases
such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, arthritis, osteoporosis, and bad
feelings at social-mental level. The
environment set-up can be blamed for their disease basically caused by
excessive increased (gross-level) energy ingested (in food) and decreased
energy expended (in activities). While
it is true that a healthier environment set-up would make it much easier to have healthy habits,
there are many outliers that can be seen where there are individuals resistant to the over-weight illness in
the same environment and sharing other similarities of would-be variations to
those that have the illness. These
remaining-healthy individuals’ behaviors, motivations, and leadership could
serve as an example for the ill patients to follow too. The most important reasons for their illness
include easily obtainable, unhealthy, yet (evolutionarily) “tasty” food with no
near-term consequences and natural tendencies toward lower-lowest energy states
of being. Maybe “easier-said-than-done”,
and it depends on the individual (e.g. their nature, their age, their
priorities/responsibilities, their opportunities) but generally, these patients
need to move more & eat less to balance their gross-level energy account.
This goodvertisement tip sheet would be presented to them where they are with the help of other interest groups
that include health/medical clinics, gyms, companies of “a potentially
healthier employee”, college groups with greater potentials to actually create
“value”, health insurance payers that have most tangibly seen the costs of chronic
diseases like these, and public health groups.
(Maybe endorsed by an organization like the US Preventative Services Task
Force)
Some
examples of places include: via patients’ smart phones
through encouraging goodvertisements, apps, etc., Food-Disconnection (FD) rated
places like gross-ery stores,
restaurants, convenient stores, donut shops, etc. “FD rated” is basically anywhere the patient obtains food other than a community garden
type of place. Even the local farmers’
markets would be FD rated even though it is less
of a disconnection of the patient to their food. Also the health food store would be FD rated
even though it is more likely fitting to their situation of vegetative
inactivity. So, the standard for a place
that one can obtain food and not be FD is high (i.e. exclusively a community
garden type of place where they actually do the all the work to obtain food,
rather than have others, machines, or other imbalanced dead energies (e.g.
fossil fuel powered equipment) do the work for them. As a side note, it is
understood that the individual need not actually expend energy on gardening
activity to get their exercise or sufficient (yet indirect) connection to their
food – after all, like there is exchange of value in the Economy, there is
exchange of energies in the Life.
[directly presented on
poster, embedded with QRC code(s), or link(s) to more details as appropriate]
1)
Basic awareness-related
Like
this introspective health assessment from Kaiser Permanente (KP),
or an exercise history
and attitude questionnaire from American
Council on Exercise (ACE), but more wholistic inclusion, including the
following themes:
+pervading and normal
(like the unrealistic “American dream” mentality of wanting more than deserved)
of business is that “the customer is always right” combined with the common
availing of services to parallel customer demand, which is many times (doubly*) unhealthy. *for their personal
health and environmental health
+awareness of the connection of the
pervading food disconnection and environmental destructions
+embodied energy, externalized
costs, energy imbalance (that are less measurable, more
subtle, and more inclusive understanding than the grosser nutrition-label
calorie count would indicate)
+doubly healthy “ecotherapy”
benefits
+caution of higher intensity but
less frequent, “weekend warrior” path as opposed to more frequent, sustained,
life-changing path
+realization of true nature and
access full potential
+their abilities and willingness,
including guidances like Patient
motivation & Making
time (from KP)
+potential undesirable consequences
if continued unhealthiness
2)
Simple suggestions or steps to change some unhealthy behaviors (in
the same unhealthy environment, so
may require more effort or discipline)
Ideas
can be taken from various sources. Included here are some
tips, inspirations, and tools specifically from KP:
+[ideas for fun, healthy activities
(e.g. food prep demos & resourcefulness ideas, “all you can should
eat” station)]
+[tools and apps to start a healthy
fitness routine and monitor your progress]
3)
Local opportunities for doubly healthy activities
+Helping at doubly healthy arboretums, gardens, farms
(and “nature gyms”)
+Harvesting/gleaning groups that outreach to neglected
fruit trees and excess foods that would be wasted
+Nature/ecosystem restoration groups for environmental
protection and reversal of damaged environment
A nature gym
with appropriate low to zero external input setups and equipments. This especially means not using
environmentally unfriendly, unsustainable, high C-footprint, nonrenewable,
unhealthy energies; from less directly visible or understood fossil-fuel
products, to more directly seen heavy vehicle equipments that can easily be
seen to undesirably compact the soil/earth.
Also, having knowledgeable experienced facilitators available would be
helpful. Here are some example of activities for patients:
*gardening work (either with an already set up
garden, they can setup their own, orr adopt an abandoned setup
garden). Specific activities can even
include scything and chopping wood. Also, have calorie-burning estimates of
different activities.
*using human
power as much as possible, and (for example) especially at beginning if better
strategy to exchange with external to the gym, stop truck at border/gate and
have patients manually deliver (or wheel barrow?) compost loads to compost
area.
*hand washing cloths and dishes, post-harvest food
handling or preparation, electricity generation, water pumping, loom spinning,
etc., which can also be powered by environmentally-friendlier hand cranks,
bicycle-powered mills, and other typical gym equipments that can be retrofitted
appropriately. Using these mechanical tools can also be for environmentally
conscious educational purposes, including giving feedback of measurable work
(include objective efficiency percentage estimates and even life-cycle
assessments (LCAs) for equipments), but also remember patient variation, and
especially in relation to more subjective karmic, mental, and spiritual
energies (which may also translate to non-obvious, less common causes of
over-weight disease like “endocrine disorders”).
*a “camp”, retreat, or trial week of immersion in
ecotherapies, but important to follow up on if patient is achieving a sustained long-term behavior change
toward a (doubly) healthy lifestyle
-political involvement via
petitioning, writing letters to or calling political reps, joining a fitting
health advocacy group, donating money to a trustable group, or “always voting” when consuming (or not
consuming). The involvement also includes ideas learned from this
course: helping support efforts to restrict
badvertisements & promote goodvertisements (especially at sports or other
audience targetin events), and an increased tax on unhealthy foods
4)
More profound lifestyle changes (like moving to a healthier
environment or changing job/career where you have no or less unhealthy options
from the beginning)
Via their local farmers’ markets, localharvest.org, wwoof.net, ic.org, NCAT/ATTRA, ask/search smart-phone/web
…and bonus ideas for smart
phones/web/social media, apps
-attractive (“creative”) video
goodvertisements (with themes from “Basic Awareness” section above) to
inform, promote, motivate, inspire, and reinforce, (doubly) healthy behaviors
-apps: Green Apes, Seeds: The Game (from
growgamesinteractive.com), etc.
-text msg. updates
of reminders, motivations, inspirations, events, etc.
