Mobile Phones — Good for Your Health?

Well, it’s not quite the phone that’s a health aid, but a new
service launched today called Wellphone, promises to help you keep your fitness
quest on track when you’re on the go.

Nothing to download, you just register at the Wellsphere Web
site. Once registered, you can get text
message reminders, daily tips, local health-related resources and log progress
toward fitness goals from your mobile phone.

Wellsphere quotes a
Stanford Prevention Center study that tracked a group of people’s workout
habits over eight weeks. The results? Those who received mobile reminders
worked out for five hours per week on average, three hours more than the
control group. But no real surprise there, we all know nagging  works — except when it comes to my teenage son.

I poked around
Wellsphere’s Web site and saw they have quite a few resources including how-to
videos and plenty of community entries. There’s also an Enterprise Solutions area for companies that
want to get their employees doing a few squat thrusts in between trips to the
snack room.

“Wellthy
employees make healthy companies” is their slogan — interesting play on
words. Here in Silicon Valley I think there are plenty of gym rats, but the
overriding corporate philosophy is more like “healthy companies make
wealthy employees”. Perhaps the two aren’t mutually exclusive.