interview
Sleep is part of the health equation
Community support is key to creating lifestyle changes
Lifestyle disease is often not a problem of biology but a
problem of your social network
of changing his diet, of fi xing his digestive tract, getting it back in balance with basic nutritional support, he’s absolutely symptom-free.”
Quantitative data One-off anecdotal examples are all very well, but how about a widescale test? “One of the most interesting
projects I’ve ever been involved in was at Saddleback Church in southern California,” says Hyman. Indeed, this is an initiative about which he spoke in depth at TEDMED, the medical thought leader convention, in April 2012: “I had for a long time been so focused on biology, on system-based medicine, that I hadn’t really acknowledged one key fact: that actually lifestyle disease is often not a problem of biology but a problem of your social network. You’re more likely to be obese if a friend of a friend of a friend is obese than if your parents are. “I started to think that, if social
networks could promote unhealthy lifestyles, perhaps they could also be used to promote healthy lifestyles – the idea that peer support could be used to control lifestyle disease.
“At this point, I was approached by the pastor of Saddleback Church, Rick Warren, who had realised there was a health issue among his congregation – a congregation that numbered 30,000 people split across 5,000 small groups, 5,000 mini-churches. Together we put together a healthy living curriculum, The Daniel Plan, and set about testing whether community support could be more effective than conventional medicine in reversing and treating disease and in creating health. “In the fi rst week, 15,000 people signed up to the free programme, and over the space of last year they lost a combined 250,000lbs in bodyweight. Participants also fed back that they were using less medication, spending less time in hospital, coming off their diabetes meds. Disease went away as a side-effect of creating health. “As part of the programme, over 1,000 people stepped forward to become health champions, helping others to change their diets and lead a healthier lifestyle. And those who did the plan together lost twice as much weight as those who did it alone. Of course we used biology and system-based medicine
34 Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital
Clubs can offer nutrition education
in the design of the programme itself, but we got behaviour to change by using the community – the power of positive peer pressure and social networks.” He continues: “When confronted with the issue of what I call ‘diabesity’ – the global epidemic of diabetes, obesity and lifestyle disease, which is set to cost US$47trn over 40 years and kill 50 million people a year by the end of the decade – people are overwhelmed. But actually it’s a simple problem with a simple solution. A community isn’t just a vehicle through which to educate people – community is actually the cure. It’s part of medicine. “We need to teach people how to
self-care and care for each other. It’s about democratising and decentralising healthcare, whereby your community rather than your local doctors’ surgery becomes the best place to make yourself healthy. “I believe there are millions of health champions out there just waiting to be asked to help people take back their health. Our aim is therefore to scale up the Daniel Plan to reach a billion people, dramatically cutting healthcare costs in the process.”
Social change Although much of the power therefore lies in the hands of the individual, and groups of individuals acting as a community, Hyman acknowledges that there are issues that have to be addressed at a higher social level.
august 2012 © cybertrek 2012
MONKEY BUSINESS IMAGES /
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
KIRSTY PARGETER /
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
DMITRIY SHIRONOSOV /
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
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