Improving your health with a sudden change

A private social network for healthcare provides a direct digital connection between doctor and patient/caregiver. Doctor provides guidance and patient updates status as easy as in Facebook but in a private setting.

The direct connection and exchange of data (the doctor providing guidance and the patient providing his personal experience) makes decision making easier for doctor and increases trust with the patient.

The data that flows between healthcare provider and patient (“I want you to do this exercise 4 times a day”, “Well, I only did it twice for 2 days this week”) is key to better compliance and improving the patient’s health outcome.

An example of personal data collection is “The Feltron Annual Report”

At the end of 2005, Nicholas Felton decided to publish a report that would chronicle his life over the previous year. He looked through his music archives to see how many songs he had listened to. He checked his airline ticket stubs to see how many miles he had flown. He aggregated the number of books read and photos taken. He compiled those and myriad other data points into his first annual report about his life, aptly titled, “The Feltron Annual Report.” 

People may have medical issues, some are mild and harmless, others are hard and painful, some are genetic, some are environmental. Smoking, drinking, over-eating or simply not getting enough exercise and suffering from back pain as a result.

Improving health outcomes requires collecting data, and organizing in a clear way so that you know first of all where you are really holding.

Once you know your “status” (like they say in Alcoholics Anonymous – “I am an alcoholic”), you then have the ability to change compulsive/addictive behavior or enforce a treatment plan.

After you have the data, how do you make the change?

Most people will say that after you have the data, you should try and change step by step

A surprising insight from Rabbi Joseph Horowitz in his book “ Madreigas Ha’adam- ( The level of man”) suggests that we should make the change in an instant.

We’ll illustrate his idea of making sudden changes with a little story.

But first, we need some background. Observant Jews keep “kosher”. They don’t mix meat and milk, they don’t eat non-kosher meat and they keep 2 sets of dishes – 1 set for meat and 1 set dairy. The pan you used to prepare pork chops, becomes  “treife” – literally unkosher.

So here is the story:

“Imagine this scenario: A person decides that he wants to make his entire kitchen kosher. But he claims, ‘Changing my dishes all at once involves throwing out an entire set and buying a brand new one. That’s quite an expense at one time. I’ll go about the process step by step. Today I’ll throw out one plate and replace it with a new one, tomorrow with a second and the next day with a third.’

“Of course, once a new plate is mixed with the old ones, it becomes treife like the rest. To make a kitchen, one must throw out all of his old dishes at once.

“The same holds true in respect to changing one’s character traits or way of life. One must change them in an instant because there is no guarantee that the anxieties and pressures that deter him on any given day will not deter him the following day, too, since anxieties and pressures are never ending. The time to leave one’s past and to change… is now”

(Madreigas Ha’adam, Rabbi Joseph Horowitz).

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