We live in an age of accessible information. The internet, cellular phones, and numerous other technologies have enabled us to exchange information quicker and more effectively than ever before, which might make it seem as though we are now better informed than ever before. But many people are still ignorant of, or simply resistant to, health-related scientific findings.
Dr. Bernard Choi, a professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at U of T, is attempting to spread new health proverbs, which make scientific findings more palatable to the public. “People often remember proverbs although they may not remember tables of data on calories or metabolic rates,” said Choi.
Well-known proverbs such as, “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure,” “Eat to live, not live to eat,” “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,” and “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” were created by people based on their experiences. Many of these still apply today in light of recent medical research. However, Choi envisions the addition of new proverbs to this arsenal which better reflect “the results of clinical trials, rather than observations that haven’t been verified.”
In collaboration with his wife and children, Dr. Choi composed a list of “potentially promising health proverbs for the 21st century,” published in The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Their sayings contain advice on all aspects of healthy living. Choice excerpts include:
A smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.
To get angry is to punish yourself with other people’s mistakes,” for stress management.
The more you smoke, the more you croak.
Smoking makes you ugly.
Drinker’s liver, smoker’s lung, couch potato’s flab, binger’s bulge.
Drinking and driving don’t mix
Seven days without exercise makes one weak
A tri-color meal is a good deal
Double cheeseburgers and large fries. How does diet pop make that wise?
Choi says that a more effective means of distributing health information to the public is needed. “Scientific findings must be published in accessible formats for the public to use,” he says. He suggests that the internet may not be the most effective means of informing the public. “A Google search on the internet using the key words “health + information” brought 103 million web sites. If a person spends an average of only one minute on each web site, it will take 588 years to go though all existing web sites, assuming an eight hour work day, 365 days a year,” he continued.
He suggests that health information can be converted into more appealing forms such as plays, folk songs and other forms of entertainment. Choi also sees a need to convert dry statistics into events that people can relate to. He cites as an example the “Chronic Disease Clock” on which it is possible to see, in real time, increases in the number of deaths due to chronic diseases. Chronic diseases are non-infectious, preventable, and often the result of personal health choices; examples include diabetes, lung cancer, arthritis, and stroke.
Integrating scientific health-related findings into cultural events and activities appears to be a sure-fire way to raise public awareness of medical discoveries. Armed with a hoard of innovative proverbs, folk songs, and plays, which subtly promote health consciousness, Choi suggests that people’s behaviour is sure to change for the better. But will people take these cute new sayings seriously? Will they change their behaviour accordingly? Or will such innovative sayings as “The more you smoke, the more you croak” be laughed off by the smoker as he lights up his cigarette, in the same way that he ignores the gruesome pictures of cancerous lungs and blackened teeth on his cigarette box?
