Type 2 Diabetes - Twitter for Health!

By Beverleigh H Piepers

One important function of public health departments consists of educating the public about good health practices. Type 2 diabetes is a major health concern; by 2050 one-third of adults in the United States alone could be diabetic. The disease is preventable with information designed to help people change their unhealthy habits. Getting out the word to large numbers of people could be likened to campaigns of immunizations that made smallpox a thing of the past and today help to control the number of new cases of polio and other infectious diseases. In the past, health departments

typically relied upon pamphlets and posters to disseminate their messages. Today more sophisticated and popular means of communication allow them to reach more individuals at a lower cost.

Investigators at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, looked at the use of Twitter as a method for Public Health Departments to educate the public on diet and exercise for the prevention of the development of Type 2 diabetes.

Their study, published in the journal Prevention of Chronic Diseases in March 2013, included 217 local public health departments with Twitter accounts. One hundred and twenty-six, or 58 percent of them, had twittered about diabetes. Larger departments with more personnel and much larger budgets, departments that had active diabetes education programs, and departments in areas where diabetes was most common, tended to have the most Twitter messages on the subject.

Signing up for Twitter takes less than a minute to sign up to, and information on Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes abounds...

• a public health department in North Carolina, USA, has a list of three reasons for staying active (they have to do with weight, blood pressure, heart disease, cholesterol, cancer, blood sugar and, of course, diabetes).


• Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health has information on the nutritive value of fast foods (yes, they do have some).


• the Los Angeles County Public Health Department has the basics on prevention, signs and symptoms, and management of Type 2 diabetes.


• Harvard's School of Public Health discusses sugary drinks.


• The Centers for Disease Control has a series of Twitter messages to save lives.


• the American Diabetes Association twitters messages for healthful diets, including a Mother's Day brunch.


• the International Diabetes Federation has a wide range of videos on diabetes as a public health and individual problem and what to do about it.

What Twitters on diabetes can you find?

Type 2 diabetes is not a condition you must just live with. By making easy changes to your daily routine, its possible to protect your heart, kidneys, eyes and limbs from the damage often caused by diabetes, and eliminate some of the complications you may already experience.

For nearly 25 years Beverleigh Piepers has searched for and found a number of secrets to help you build a healthy body.

The answer isn't in the endless volumes of available information but in yourself.

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