The insulin pump manufacturer Medtronic offers a popular iPhone app starring a cuddly character named Larry the Lion. He helps diabetic children count their carbs to keep their glycemic index in the right zone.
“Larry the Lion is very cute,” says Lois Gilmer, a diabetes educator at the University of Colorado’s Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes. Since kids like Larry, the app makes eating right a fun game instead of an exercise in self-denial.
Gilmer says the iPhone apps are very popular with their diabetic patients. “A lot of clients I work with do use apps on their Smartphones—that’s useful and we encourage it,” she says.
Other companies, such as Game Equals Life in Norman, Oklahoma, and Bayer, also offer video games that are uniquely tailored to children with diabetes.
Beating Stress and Staying Heart-Healthy
Meanwhile, in Cleveland, prevention experts are using social media and free iPhone apps to appeal to sports fans and reduce their cardiac disease risk. The Cleveland Clinic recently launched a campaign called Let’s Move It!
The Let’s Move It! app, which works with iPhone and iPod Touch, includes a pedometer that helps users keep track of their individual progress. The app also challenges users to participate in different sports-related community walks. For example, they can try to walk the equivalent mileage between Cleveland Browns Stadium and Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati. As they participate in the challenge, fellow walkers can cheer them on through Facebook and Twitter. The app even tells them how many steps they would have to take to work off a hot dog, beer, and fries at the stadium.
“Physical inactivity is one of the factors contributing to the escalating chronic disease rate in America,” said Michael Roizen, MD, Chairman of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute, in a statement. “The Let’s Move It! app makes exercise fun by creating friendly competitions among users. Research has shown that people who have access to an interactive, social exercise environment are more likely to actually exercise.”
In other areas of the country, cardiologists are turning their patients on to iPhone apps that help them watch for trends in their blood pressure readings and calculate their risk for a heart attack.
Stress is another factor in heart disease, as well as a host of other conditions, from depression and dementia to fibromyalgia. So the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute also offers a free app that leads users through guided meditations. These relaxation apps help people relax their muscles, let go of their anger, and practice mindfulness.
Cleveland Clinic has its own health information Web site. The site, at 360-5.com, is similar to MayoClinic.com, but is more interactive and also sells wellness products. As part of its offerings, it includes an online application that goes with the iPhone app called Stress Free Now. Clinicians at Cleveland Clinic have access to the program for any patient. Others can pay for it for $40 per person. To preview Stress Free Now, visit www.360-5.com/promos.
Thomas Morledge, MD, medical director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Enterprise, created the eight-week Stress Free Now program and the app. Patients log on daily to read motivational messages from Morledge. Then, they can download an MP3 with breathing techniques, relaxation methods, and positive affirmations. They must set aside about 30 minutes, several times a week, to see results.
“There’s a lot of literature to support these techniques,” Morledge says. “It can help with chronic pain, such as fibromyalgia, and cut down on inflammation. It can reduce the risk of stroke and dementia.” The Cleveland Clinic program is based a great deal on the work of mindfulness expert and University of Massachusetts medical professor Jon Kabat-Zinn.
The clinic currently is enrolling 600 patients in a clinical trial to test the effectiveness of the online program, but so far, anecdotal evidence says it is working. “When people use it, you can see there’s been a change—their color improves, they sleep better, and they have more energy,” Morledge says.
So far, it is the NPs and PAs who have referred the most patients to the Stress Free Now program, he adds. “They seem to have better peripheral vision,” he says. “They have a very patient-centered approach to their care.”
Stress remains an overlooked component of health, even though, as Morledge says, “The impact of stress is probably as great as [that of] obesity.”
By reaching out to patients with MP3s, iPhone apps, and online coaching, Cleveland Clinic is on the leading edge of an important trend in prevention. Programs like Stress Free Now can help spread the word to thousands of people—more than any single clinician could reach from a typical medical office.