Can Texting Save Your Life?
Hey. Did you know, texting can be good for you?
After all the stuff about how the Internet could feed a drug habit, or make us drive off the road and kill someone (actually, I'm not kidding about that) or gain weight or lose our sex drive (made those last two up!), how refreshing to finally find something good it does.
True, it's not like curing cancer or stamping out hepatitis C, but it's helping diabetics take better care of themselves. It might also decrease the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes -- you know, the one we get for eating too much, as one out of three does?
"An overwhelming majority of surveyed people who enrolled in customized texting service txt4health piloted in Detroit and Cincinnati last year said the free mobile education program made them more aware of their diabetes risk and more likely to make diet-related behavior changes and lose weight," newswise.com reports.
Sadly, though, well less than half made it through the whole 14-week program.
“It’s clear that a text message program may not be appropriate for everyone," newswise quotes lead author Lorraine R. Buis, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the U-M Medical School. "But for a large subset of people, this may be a feasible, acceptable, and useful strategy to motivate positive behavior changes.”
I'm up for it. With any luck, maybe it works for people who shop too much, too.
After all the stuff about how the Internet could feed a drug habit, or make us drive off the road and kill someone (actually, I'm not kidding about that) or gain weight or lose our sex drive (made those last two up!), how refreshing to finally find something good it does.
True, it's not like curing cancer or stamping out hepatitis C, but it's helping diabetics take better care of themselves. It might also decrease the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes -- you know, the one we get for eating too much, as one out of three does?
"An overwhelming majority of surveyed people who enrolled in customized texting service txt4health piloted in Detroit and Cincinnati last year said the free mobile education program made them more aware of their diabetes risk and more likely to make diet-related behavior changes and lose weight," newswise.com reports.
Sadly, though, well less than half made it through the whole 14-week program.
“It’s clear that a text message program may not be appropriate for everyone," newswise quotes lead author Lorraine R. Buis, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the U-M Medical School. "But for a large subset of people, this may be a feasible, acceptable, and useful strategy to motivate positive behavior changes.”
I'm up for it. With any luck, maybe it works for people who shop too much, too.
Comments
Post a Comment