Diabetes "Hotspots" in the US

An interesting study has identified 10 states as being hotspots for type 2 diabetes. They are:

1. California:  6.6 million people with diabetes;
   
2. Texas:  5.5 million;
   
3. Florida: 4.2 million;
   
4. New York:  2.9 million;
   
5. Ohio:  2.1 million;
   
6. Illinois: 2 million;
   
7. Georgia: 2 million;
   
8. Pennsylvania: 1.9 million;
   
9. North Carolina: 1.9 million; and
   
10. Michigan: 1.6 million.

The sad and frustrating thing for healthcare professionals is that many cases of type 2 diabetes are preventable. Unlike type 1 diabetes, which often, but not always, begins in childhood, type 2 diabetes can result from being overweight and inactive.

According to the CDC, type 2 diabetes (previously called adult-onset or non-insulin dependent diabetes) accounts for 90% to 95% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes. Let me repeat that: 90% to 95% of all diagnosed cases.

The American Diabetes Association reports: In 2007, diabetes was listed as the underlying cause on 71,382 death certificates and was listed as a contributing factor on an additional 160,022 death certificates. This means that diabetes contributed to a total of 231,404 deaths.

Diabetes is more than just a disease that affects your blood sugar. High blood sugar levels affect your whole body drastically. Having diabetes increases your risk of developing heart disease, nerve pain (particularly in your feet) and inability to fight infection. Having diabetes can lead to an often fatal illness called sepsis. Diabetes can cause kidney disease, too.

The cost of diabetes is enormous. From the financial aspect of dealing with the supplies to manage the disease, to the lost days of work. Diabetes affects the community as a whole.

Are you at risk for diabetes? Take the ADA Risk Test to find out.

Children's changing health

When my children were younger (they're 16, 19 and three weeks short of 21 now), there was some concern among some parents about keeping the kids active. Computers weren't all the rage quite yet and movies were only available in VHS (or beta!), so TV was really the major competition for exercise.

I did notice, very early, that there weren't kids playing outside in the same numbers as when I was a child. When we brought our kids to a local park, there may be a few other children playing, but very often, ours were the only ones there. This was the same park I played at as a child and was always full of kids - alone - all day long.

I know that things are different now, particularly with most families having both parents working, but we have to look at what this is doing to our children. For many, the only physical activity they get is in organized sports (if parents can afford it) or gym class at school (if they have it).

I've seen playgrounds at schools where children are banned from playing any of the active games that we played, for fear of injury. One friend even told me that tag was banned at her cousin's school because too many children were getting hurt running and tripping on the concrete. You see, many schools don't have grass either.

Add to that, many of the kids who would have walked to school in "the old days" are now driven by parents, the lack of time on weekends to go outside and play because of all the stuff that needs to be caught up, is there any wonder we're looking at record numbers of obesity, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes in *children*?

It's just going to get worse. The more we try to protect our kids, the worse we are making it for them. Here are a couple of the most recent stories in the news: Inactive kids face 6-fold risk of heart disease by teen years, study finds and Keep on running.

We worry too much about our kids - seriously. I know a few people I knew thought I was nuts to let my kids do some of the stuff they did. My oldest used to go outside with his friend, on their bikes, and go dirt bike riding near the river and across some farm land behind our house (we live in a suburb that borders some farms). They'd be gone for hours. My daughter didn't get into the same sort of thing, but she did dance competitively for quite a while and played organized sports. My youngest son did some of the stuff his older brother did, but he got more involved with wilderness and camping stuff - and he's involved in a weekly floor hockey program.

We have to go back to letting kids be kids. There has got to be a better way to balance our need to protect them with their needs to be free to do things that will help them grow up strong and healthy.

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Good and bad cholesterol?

We often hear about good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, such as when we read articles like Not enough 'good' cholesterol makes it harder to recover from stroke. Unfortunately, many people don’t understand what bad or good cholesterol are and what the difference is between the two.

First, what is cholesterol? Cholesterol is a fat-like substance that is produced by our liver and ingested through food. We need cholesterol as a building block for healthy cells walls and tissues, among other things. However, cholesterol can also be dangerous as it can build up and block blood flow.

The so-called good cholesterol, the one we need to keep healthy is called high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and the so-called bad cholesterol is called low-density lipoprotein (LDL). A trick to remember which is which – you want the good cholesterol to be high so HDL; you want the bad cholesterol to be low, so LDL.

The American Heart Association has this great section, What Your Cholesterol Levels Mean to help you understand the numbers and what numbers you want to see when your blood is tested.

Since it’s known that high LDL can contribute to heart disease and stroke, everyone – particularly those with heart disease in the family – should know their baseline cholesterol levels. The earlier you know your levels, the earlier you can begin working on prevention. If your levels are normal, your goal is to keep it normal; if your levels are too high for LDL, then your goals are lower your numbers.

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It’s never too late to start eating a healthy diet

I watched my 18-year-old daughter making a meal the other day; she chopped vegetables, combined a little of this and a little of that, a bit of flavouring and voila: a healthy, delicious meal, made in about 15 or 20 minutes. She finished it off with apples and peanut butter, or was it yogurt and berries this time?

She eats wonderfully well and makes delicious concoctions that I never would have ventured to make at that age. She’ll grill up a tasty chicken breast, make a tuna salad, or stuff a pita with sautéed vegetables. I was brought up with canned vegetables and boiled potatoes. Eating couscous or souvlaki? Never.

I’m glad to say that my tastes have evolved and I am as adventurous as my daughter, but it took her, and my oldest son, to teach me. Although, as a mom, I’d gone beyond the canned vegetables and boiled potatoes of my youth, I still was not as adventurous as I could have been. Of course, it could have had something to do with having three fussy toddlers who didn’t want different foods touching each other, let alone taste funny.

To tell you the truth, I’m thrilled to see my older two experimenting with healthier foods. My youngest is starting to taste new things and I’m confident that it will happen that he, too, will begin enjoying the variety of food we have here. The abundance of different flavours from different cultures gives us such an opportunity to eat in a healthy way, but not be limited to the same foods over and over.

Last week, there was a study published, in the American Journal of Medicine, of 16,000 Americans between the ages of 45 and 64 years who had been tracked since the 1985. Their diets were monitored and the researchers found that no matter what age the subjects were, if they modified their diets to more healthy diets, in addition to three other lifestyle modifications, their risk of heart disease and death sharply declined. The four changes were: eating five or more vegetable or fruit servings per day, exercising for at least 2.5 hours per week, keeping a healthy weight, and not smoking.

People who only adopted three of the habits saw a small decrease in death rates, but no difference in heart disease.

Today, there was another news story on the benefits of the Mediterranean diet. There’s no reason why we can’t incorporate some of that into our North American diet, considering that most of the foods are readily available to us. Maybe we should seriously think about what we are putting in our mouths. I know I eat foods that aren’t the healthiest. Although I like my vegetables (grilled peppers, zucchini, asparagus: yum!), I’m not a huge fruit person. I’m going to have to take some time and learn some more from my children. They sure seem to know a lot more about healthy eating than I.

News for today:
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