Saturday, May 12, 2018

Solutions to Over-Weight & Food-Disconnection Pathology

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.


4 major areas and ideas to include in poster-like tip sheet
[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.

Other ideas can be taken from web resources like this site about “Promising Practices”

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