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When my nerdy (in a lovable way) boyfriend first tried to explain Twitter to me, it was so simple it confused the heck out of me. Why, I wondered, would anyone do that?
Fast forward a year or so. I happily tweet most days, about what's going on, what's stressing me out, how my workouts went (or why I skipped them), what delicious culinary delight I've created (ha). While not a total addict - yet - I follow more than 300 other Twitterers, and for some reason totally unbeknownst to me, 233 people have signed up to follow me.
I just wrote an article for the Star Tribune about how Twitter and other forms of social media help people on their weight-loss and get-fit journeys because I was blown away by what I saw among my virtual "friends."
Twitter is health crazed. Really. Hundreds of gazillions of people tweet all about what they eat (there's even a TweetWhatYouEat.com), where they get their exercise and how they struggle to be healthy. And it's a small world: I see the same Twitterers popping up all the time, responding to one another's updates with amens, you-go-girls, etc.
And health news is everywhere in the Twitterverse: Sanjay Gupta of CNN, the New York Times health beat, the CDC.
As a public health student, health reporter and self-proclaimed health nut, keeping up with Twitter means keeping up with the big and individual-level pictures at the same time - from the massive new research that just came out to the dieting woman who just can't step away from the candy dish to my own swim that totally sucked this morning.
And because I get pumped about every idea that pops into my head, I'm way excited for the ways I think Twitter can - and will - be used in the health sector. Quitting smoking? Tweet about it. You see where I'm going here? It may seem simple and sort of frivolous, but I think if this is they way things are moving, health fields better start moving with them.
Are you on Twitter? What do you tweet about? How can it be used to get and keep people healthy?
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