Hey Don, I heard you're a charter member of NAAFA!

"I'm an advanced media consultant to the healthcare/life science industries (translation: I produce websites for healthcare clients), and since I'm in the middle of a behavior modification project for patients with dietary disease (that's diabetes, pre-diabetes and obesity), I've been exposed to some of the latest information about issues regarding change management. I bet a lot of you would be surprised to learn that obesity is one of the fastest growing healthcare problems in South Africa and China--as some communities in these countries begin to acquire a higher standard of living, they look to the West to set examples of affluence and start eating more calories while expending few calories in exercise.

Here's the real problem: how do you get people who are caught in an unhealthy lifestyle within a ""toxic"" environment (in which are and have been encouraged to become more sedate while consuming more calories) reverse this trend?

One problem my project is facing is how to initiate patient complience--getting patients to begin a program that will gradually, eventually reverse their caloric intake/output issues--and then stick with it, hopefully for the rest of their lives. Yet just as dietary diseases have begun to explode, our society has become more ""politically correct"", to the extent that some people object to anyone referring to obesity as a legitimate health problem, as the CNN article points out.

A solution being explored is to encourage sedentary people to build regular exercise into their lives; once a healthy pattern is firmly established, diet can be addressed (I've actually read a suggestion that computer games should be pedal-powered--stop pedaling and the game stops). This has a better chance at being effective if our society as a whole gradually gets more exercise.

A few weeks ago, I posted an article on the NYCC message board about Bush getting into another bike accident. I found this significant because Bush, known for being compulsive about exercise (um, like us), found that running was causing too many problems with his knees and shins, so he picked mountain biking as his new sport of choice, and despite a few mishaps, he's sticking to it. Thanks to the positive buzz that an American named Lance generated recently, it's become popular to embrace cycling as a ""new"" form of virtuous behavior.

I think we have an opportunity to make the country a bit friendlier towards cycling. Just this weekend, drivers waiting at a corner for my A-ride group to pass (all thirty of us) gave us waves, smiles and thumbs up instead of honking their horns (and…well, never mind). I believe the best measure of real progress will be when a significant number of people start using bicycles for transportation, not just recreation.

I encourage club members to share ideas about what we could do—as a club and as individuals—to build on that good will and hopefully translate that into riders.


-d"