Rhythmic Jingles for Health and Fitness
Posted On 2009-11-10 , 5:38 PM
RHYTHMIC JINGLES IN HEALTH AND FITNESS
By Vernon A. Quarstein
Healthy Jingles are authoritative thumbnail self-help practices advocated by famous American medical schools and hospitals. Continued rapid advancement in medicine complicates the transfer of medical advice from the doctor’s office to the patient and to the public at large. These healthy jingles employ greatly simplified methods of informing people about medical self-help. This article advocates the conversion of some aspects of medical advice into the form of Healthy Jingles when amplified by use of narrative explanations. This approach helps close the gaps between both understanding and remembering. Preventative measures to be taken against illnesses such as obesity, memory and sleep problems, worry and anxiety, headaches and colds, heart disease and stroke, cancer and diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease are potential targets for this treatment.
This means that more people will read more and become better informed on the content and power of a fitness lifestyle to prevent debilitating diseases in the future. For those soon to be or already stricken, jingles express self-help advice as advocated by top nutritional and medical schools and famous clinics and hospitals in the United States. The www.wellnessactivities.org website illustrates the use of jingles as a method for expressing self-help guidelines for fitness and health. Jingles add a measure of fun in the process of learning about the latest fitness and health literature.
We converted selected medical self-help advice into jingles that afford certain advantages over advice written in narrative format as found in almost all medical publications. The jingle format is interesting, easy to learn, enjoyable to read, easily understood, retained longer, and recalled quicker than narrative formats. We have also converted medical advice into rhythmic healthy jingles for kids which are featured on the website.
From a health education standpoint, the average child learns at a level depending upon age. Instructions have to be kept clear and simple. Some children may be better prepared. Adults can use Kid’s jingles as well as kids to learn ways to prevent the onset of illnesses, They are generally not at their best–particularly for learning and remembering particularly after recovering from an illness. They are often overwhelmed by their diagnosis, denial, fear, and so forth. It could be helpful to reward them with their own Healthy Jingle upon departure, to guide them in recovery and self care..
Almost anyone would more likely remember a catchy phrase like “One, Two, Coated Aspirins: Don't Chew," which is better than "Don't Chew Coated Acetylsalicylic Acid Tablets,” according to Linda Dumanowski, She says, "You probably would not be amazed at the number of people who don't know the difference between acetaminophen and acetylsalicylic acid (Tylenol and aspirin). Many people think they are the same thing as is to be expected. If a drug has a long generic name, medical “lingo” confuses patients at the very beginning.
Use of jingles can rephrase the usual medical “lingo.” Not only are jingles easier to recall but also much more fun to remember. Here is an example of an old jingle that would apply to adults or children who practice poor dental hygiene (Composed by an anonymous author}:
Dental Danger Jingle
What to do to take care of YOU?
That's the biggest question by FAR.
Visit dentist, brush teeth, floss TOO,
Or your teeth may end up in a JAR!
Much of the information that adults are given is properly written at about the sixth-grade level. This level makes understanding fairly simple for some. This is not to say that the average patient’s mental ability is on a sixth-grade level, What many patients and children can assimilate needs to be stated more simply, and without too many details and in medical lingo that confuses them. The “average patient” consists of people from all walks of life, socioeconomic status, familiarity with the language, and educational and cultural backgrounds. To quote Linda Dumanowski, the nurse contributor to the book Healthy Jingles for the Mind and Body, she states:
“I have taught patients who are blind, deaf, cannot read, speak only Hmong, or who come with cultural medical beliefs that are completely different from what we practice in the United States. So, you can see where simplicity might work best. I ask the question: What is the most important bit of information that they must learn? The answer is: Medical self-care and prevention. While patients are at home there is usually no one around knowledgeable enough to advise them on medically recommended health and fitness.”
Linda Dumanowski emphasizes the absence of and importance of readily available information regarding medical self-care and prevention for patients while at home and anywhere else, for that matter. This information was once occasionally available when doctors made house calls on patients, but that practice was essentially discontinued long ago. The vacuum left by discontinuance of house calls has not since been adequately filled. If use of Jingles were to become common as a way to express medical truths perhaps the vacuum might be filled.
Narrative literature is often provided as patients leave the doctor’s office or the hospital in the form of a hastily devised and poorly reproduced unbound sheets of paper, or as oral instructions directly from the doctor. Unfortunately, narrative literature is too often too hard to read, and oral instructions may be short and soon forgotten. Some insurance companies including Medicare extend nursing care via telephone and by nurses visits before and after hospitalization, but this service covers a small portion of the market. The people on Medicade are the most vulnerable to misunderstanding. There is also a vast array of narrative information on medical self-care and self-prevention published in books, magazines, and pamphlets, but not in a form readily available, usable or believable by the average person. A half dozen rhythmic healthy jingles might help fill this vacuum created mainly by the "medical system."
For patients in a clinic or hospital, self-care and self-prevention information can be obtained from a doctor or nurse, but information on self-prevention care is usually too late. This information is available in publications sold by medical schools and clinics but the cost of such publications even though reasonable may be prohibitive to many. Healthy jingles can, on the other hand, be help fill the need for self-care and self-help while the patient is at home before becoming a patient. The series of eight Healthy Jingles for Kids books available through the www.wellnessactivities.org website and soon to be completed may contribute to self-prevention on a limited but useful scale.
We introduce the use of rhythmic healthy jingles supplemented by narrative explanations as an efficient and effective way to encapsulate self-help type advice established by medical authorities. Use of jingles as a means of expressing authoritative medical advice makes execution far easier to understand and remember, and more enjoyable to use. These jingles may also be readily set to music and songs.
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