After a
too short (aren’t holidays always too short) wonderful holiday in Sweden I’m
back in the swing of Melbourne and ready to get more Australians into a fit and
healthy lifestyle. It’s always
interesting to see what is new in how Sweden works with wellness. Swedes are in
general more active than Australians due to a long tradition in riding bikes or
walking to schools and work, and therefore more bike paths and more easy
accesses to public transportation. But never the less is Sweden like many other
countries in the world struggling with overweight and obese population.
I do
feel though that they are approaching the problem in a healthy way.
GP’s in
Sweden are rewarded if they follow-up patients with preventive care like
nutrition, exercise and healthy lifestyles, the healthier their patients are
the more funds the clinics gets.
Companies
get certified as a Healthy Company if they fulfill certain healthy lifestyle
criteria. It can be offering parking for bikes, fruit baskets, allowing exercising
during office hours or organizing in-house competitions for more active
lifestyles.
Instead
of doing health assessments with the goal of finding out if the employees has
high cholesterol, diabetes, or other bad lifestyle related symptoms, they work
with a preventive health assessment goal. The employees are given a healthy
lifestyle plan with exercises and healthy eating suggestions for preventing metabolic syndrome symptoms.
I think
we are heading in the right direction here, but there is always room for
improvement and changing habits takes a long time both for humans and
society.
Yours in Health & Fitness,
Birgitta
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