Dr. Barry Baines

And within public health, there's this whole concept of readiness for change, for

for just about any behavior that, you know, you don't even want to think, you know, this made its grand entrance actually in psychiatry, but with quitting smoking, for example, that if someone is not interested in quitting smoking, there's no point in having a conversation about it.

But people over time, they say, well, maybe I'd like to hear about it.

And then they, you know, get to a point with the motivation they'd like to

maybe learn more about what they can do to change and then actually take action.

So for me, what I found, again, as a normal person, not as a physician,

is that it's a tool to check in and motivate me so that when my watch, when it's 10 o'clock at night and I get the message, hey, you just need to walk for five minutes more and you'll close your exercise ring.

So then, okay, well, I take my dog out at 10, but usually I just have to go in front of the house and he does his business and we come back in and I go, Louie?

We're going to go around the block tonight.

Do you know what I mean?

So it sort of helps me keep tabs on those things.

And the information is valuable.

And certainly from now putting my medical hat back on, that information, people, you know, slash patient, but people are able to collect information.

uh, more data that can be helpful to physicians to get a bigger picture of what's going on in a person's health.

And, and that's, uh, I think very, you know, very helpful.

Like when I went to see my cardiologist a few months ago, I said, Hey, do you want to see my, uh, my AFib history over the last six months?

He said, well, uh,

you know, you know, yeah, why don't you, you know, yeah, you could, you know, show that to me, but I said, but it's good, you know, it just kind of, you know, helps me to keep track of where, of where I'm at.

And, and those kinds of things, just like the monitoring with, with diabetes and blood, blood sugars, you know, those kinds of things are more, you know, some of them more continuous and some are things that you could, you know, check, check in with.

Well, you know, I'm asking for advice a fair amount, you know, and that's okay.