Fear leads us to make bad decisions... And what better way to make people fearful than giving them scary numbers about their current health?
I’m a firm believer that a positive outlook leads to far better results on an individual’s health journey than negative ones. What I’m saying to you is, lets help our employees move towards what they want rather than away from what they don’t want.
Every September in the UK the charity Blood Pressure UK runs its ‘Know your numbers campaign, where individuals are encouraged to have their blood pressure checked. This is sometimes (but not always) complemented with general healthy lifestyle information.
Does information lead to change?
I’m not a believer that just giving people information consistently leads to change. Not only can some people find the bad news crippling, but without solid information on what to do to improve those numbers it’s no wonder these campaigns aren’t bringing the numbers down.
Behavioural change in 7 days?
In my experience as a health coach trying to help somebody change their behaviour with a solid plan of action would be difficult in 7 days, but with vague suggestions such as ‘lose weight’ its hard to see how anybody taking part in the know your numbers campaign could make meaningful changes in 7 days. By the time the numbers have settled into the mind most businesses are onto their next awareness campaign and numbers are forgotten.
More than one way to skin a cat
There are numerous lifestyle factors influence our blood pressure, such as diet, alcohol intake, sleep, hydration, mental state, smoking, and movement, and whilst the campaigns do make mention of these they are quite vague. Which leads me on to how they need to improve it...
People know what to do they just don’t know ‘HOW’
We’ve never had more information at our fingertips than we do today. Thanks to the world wide web and smartphones we’re drenched in information from the moment we wake til we go to sleep. Every bit of information you need to live healthily is out there, but still the WHO has recently reported that global obesity rates have tripled since 1994.
More information isn’t the answer, behavioural change is.
We need less general advice such as, ‘stop smoking, ‘eat less’, ‘move more’ ‘drink less’ etc and more coaching on how to actually do it. English philosopher Francis Bacon famously said, “Knowledge itself is power”, but I believe when it comes to our health knowledge is only powerful when its acted upon.
One more thing to worry about?
Finding out you have high blood pressure when you already have high BMI, high blood sugar, and so on is unlikely to inspire us all to change as it adds to our list of panics. But underlying all of these numbers is how we lead our lives, aka lifestyle, this is the primary causal factor for unhealthy numbers.
In my opinion organisations would be much better off investing their time and money into much longer (eg: 30 days) campaigns that focus on improving all of the lifestyle factors we know to impact numbers such as blood pressure.
That would mean campaigns promoting behavioural changes around sleep, hydration, mind management practices, movement, diet, and so. Most of the issues of modern health whether it be ischemic heart disease (the no.1 killer of men in the UK) to type 2 Diabetes and high blood pressure all have similar ‘PREVENTABLE’ lifestyle factors underlying them. This knowledge needs to be more widely spread.
Use your numbers as a measure of success not source of fear
Wouldn’t it be great if businesses offered quarterly health checks alongside healthy lifestyle campaigns like those I mentioned above so that staff can be continuously working towards improving their health, and just using the numbers as a periodic check in?
This sounds much more positive to me than annual fear campaigns that last only long enough for a pill prescription to feel like the only viable solution. But we know wellness can’t be found in a pill, and it takes time, that’s why I’m advocation for ongoing healthy living campaigns focusing on 'nudging your numbers' rather than short-term awareness campaigns that simply focus on 'knowing them'.
Jonathan Pittam
Preventative Wellness Educator
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