Healthy with a little help from your friends

Two recent stories in Ohio suggest that nagging may become a health fad.

Getting nagged, not being a nag is the key. The idea is that developing healthy habits is easier if you are getting plenty of encouragement from those around you – the family and friends who have a vested interest in your good health. Here are a couple of examples worth following.

Story #1 – Pastor Keith Troy of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Columbus got tired of watching men in his congregation drop dead from preventable diseases. After four funerals in the same week last November he had all them stand up during a Sunday service and write down their names and phone numbers. He said he wanted every single one of them to promise to see a doctor within the next three months, and he planned to make follow up calls. If they couldn’t afford it, the church would pay for the appointment. If they needed transportation, someone from the church would drive them.

The church has a predominantly black congregation, and Troy knew that statistically, one out of three black men don’t see a physician regularly, and that black men have higher rates of hypertension and higher rates of fatal strokes than the rest of the population. Other churches have called to ask for pointers on doing similar things, he said.

Story #2 – Ohio State University researcher Prabu David is tracking 80 women for 12 weeks as they receive automatic calls on their cell phones reminding them to exercise. Half the participants will also get calls from fitness trainers with personalized tips. The idea is to find out if the electronic nagging will motivate older women to engage in regular exercise which might then lead to lower incidence of such illnesses as breast cancer.

If the nagging works for exercise, David said his team might try the system to help reduce smoking and bad eating habits.