Free Will vs. Your Environment

When we face health challenges and need to change our health habits, we must confront our own social situation, one which most frequently doesn’t support a healthy lifestyle. But we do need support from others walking this new path. I work daily with stroke patients, many from rural parts of our state. To prevent further strokes they must significantly alter their lifestyle, especially their diet and exercise routines. The problem for these people starts when they return to their homes; they have no support, role models or experience to implement these changes. My college aged son recently returned from a trip to a very poor part of rural America where he worked with Habitat for Humanity. He observed the poor people there seemed to fry everything they ate, even though eating lots of fried food almost certainly will have long-term negative health effects (especially for stroke patients). 


So returning to this type of situation for a person who has just had a stroke usually requires a monumental reversal of something as essential as food preparation. If all the food your family makes comes from the frying pan, this means upsetting the apple cart not only for yourself but for your friends and family.  So the level of available support for a healthy lifestyle will vary greatly depending on where you live. In certain areas of the country (almost invariably in more urban settings) you will find much more of a community attempting to live healthfully.  But if you live in a poor rural area, you will usually find far fewer individuals working consciously with their bodies. Therefore, it’s infinitely easier to make some small superficial attempts at changing your diet before slipping back into more familiar and comfortable (but poor) health habits.

Fortunately for those people isolated from a healthy lifestyle, new options for contact with like minded people have opened up through technology. The Internet offers low cost interaction with others through blogs, Face-book, Tweets, etc., where you can discuss with other people your efforts, successes and failures in moving forward with good health behaviors. These emerging venues for social interaction provide an opportunity for community at even a global level. While these methods of social support don’t have much research backing their effectiveness in assisting people change their lifestyle (they’re almost too new), their amazing growth almost certain validates their impact.  The Pew Internet Project reveals the power the internet already has in the United Sates to foster social interaction. Some data to consider:  78% of Americans use the internet (the digital divide is closing), 66% of users connect to social networks, 43% of which check social networks daily, and the primary reason people use social networks is to connect to family and friends (new and old) followed by connecting to people with shared interests or hobbies. 

While some people have tremendous ability to just will themselves through life change, they are the exception rather than the rule. For most of us, we don’t want to constantly face this by ourselves. While we can will ourselves to great heights temporarily, in the ongoing daily battle between our will and an unsupportive environment, the environment will usually win out by wearing us down bit by bit. To sustain ourselves we need ongoing support and now technology offers avenues for assistance for even the most geographically challenged. Trying these avenues of communication and support out will almost always be beneficial, making them well worth the effort. 


Please share interesting ways online social networks are being used to help people achieve greater wellness.