Diabetes Health Talk

Daisys

Get your heart really pumping on your next date night and sneak in some exercise. With a sense of adventure (and perhaps a sense of humor), you could be on your way to burning enough calories for dessert!

Dance the night away. Salsa, tango, or foxtrot with your special someone. Ballroom dancing can burn a whopping 240-380* calories in a one-hour session.
Wander about winter. Take advantage of all winter has to offer. Start a snow ball fight. Build a snowman. Go ice skating or cross country skiing.
Walk the dog. Take a leisurely walk with your sweetie and the pooch. Some restaurants and cafes now allow canines in outdoor seating areas. Or, pack a picnic and head towards the park.
Window shop. A 30-minute stroll before or after a meal can burn 90-130 calories. You can also break it up into two 15-minute sessions.
Rent a movie. Cue up a fitness video from the library, video store, DVR, or online. Trying a new type of exercise, such as yoga or aerobics, at home allows you the freedom to make mistakes and laugh at yourself (or your partner).
Do some good. Volunteering at a hospital, youth program, school, or park can keep you moving and provide you and your loved one with some special bonding time.
Go bowling. Not only is bowling a fun activity to do as a couple or with a group of friends, it is also a great way to strengthen muscles and improve flexibility.
Quick and easy. Don’t forget the simple ways to burn calories, whether you are on date night or just out and about. Take the stairs. Park at the far end of the parking lot. Avoid the automatic doors and open the door for your date yourself.

st patrick

1. The potato crop was traditionally planted in Ireland after March 17

2. Blue not green is the color originally associated with St Patrick. “St Patrick’s Blue” is used on Ireland’s Presidential Standard or flag, while the Irish Guards sport a plume of St Patrick’s blue in their bearskins. The emphasis on green is thought to be linked to “wearing the Green”, a symbol from the 18th century on, of sympathy with Irish independence.

3. St Patrick is patron of fishermen in the Loire, where a legend associates him with a blackthorn bush. The saint is said to have slept beneath it, and when he awoke the next day, Christmas, the bush flowered, and was said to have continued to do so every Christmas until its destruction during the First World War.

4. A regiment of the Mexican army in the 1846 -8 War between Mexico and America was named after St Patrick. Members of the Batellón de San Patricio included Afro-Americans freshly liberated from the slave plantations of the South, and the soldiers were granted Mexican citizenship afterwards.

. The first St Patrick’s Day parade took place in 1737 in Boston, followed in 1762 by New York. George Washington allowed his soldiers a holiday on March 17, 1780 as “an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence.”

6. Until the 1970’s, all pubs were shut in Ireland on St Patrick’s Day, and the sole venue selling drink the annual dog show. Lenten fasting – and the obligation to abstain from meat – were lifted on the day, which most families would begin with Mass.

7. St Patrick’s Day is a public holiday in Ireland and also in Monserrat “the Emerald Isle of the Carribean,” so called because it was settled in 1633 by Irish migrants from St Kitts.

8. According to legend, on the day of Judgement, while Christ judges all other nations, St Patrick will be the judge of the Irish.

9. Since 1962, tons of green dye are tipped on St Patrick’s Day into the Chicago river, although the quantity has reduced, for environmental reasons, from 100 to 40.

10. Should you wish to carry on celebrating St Patrick after March 17, in the United States, you might visit the four Shamrocks in the USA including Mount Gay-Shamrock, W.Va or the nine cities named Dublin, including Dublin, Ohio (the largest Dublin in the U.S.) and Dublin, Georgia.

Brain

In one study, U.S. researchers found the same cluster of metabolic disorders that raise a woman’s risk for heart disease and diabetes also increase her chances of memory declines later in life.

A second study found that a history of diabetes and high cholesterol hasten the rate of mental declines in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

“Preventing heart disease, stroke and diabetes - or making sure these conditions are well managed in patients diagnosed with them - can potentially slow the disease progression of Alzheimer’s,” said Yaakov Stern of Columbia University Medical Center, whose study was one of several on metabolic diseases and dementia published in the Archives of Neurology.

The findings build on recent studies that suggest people who take cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins have a lower risk of developing all forms of dementia. And diabetics who take pills that help their bodies use insulin better have a lower risk of Alzheimer’s.

Now many teams are trying to get a better understanding of how these disorders affect Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

Researchers at the University of California San Francisco and the San Francisco Veterans’ Affairs Medical Center studied the effects of heart risk factors such as abdominal fat, high blood pressure and low levels of good cholesterol, known collectively as the metabolic syndrome.

Dr. Kristine Yaffe and colleagues followed 4,895 women with an average age of 66 who had no memory problems or other cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study.

Of the nearly 500 women in the group who had metabolic syndrome, 36 percent developed cognitive impairment during the four-year study period, compared with just 4 percent of the 4,400 women who did not have metabolic syndrome.

Inauguration 2009

Don’t miss out!

Add me on Facebook, Brick ONeil, as we watch this historic day when our Nation Inaugurates our first African American/Black President! What a proud day for the United States, and indeed, the World.

Remember where you were when America’s first chosen African American President was sworn in to bring America back! The entire world waits in eager anticipation, seeing President Elect Obama as the one person who can bring everyone together. What will his first actions, as President, be? How will world leaders welcome him? TIme will tell.

Enjoy history in the making.

American Diabetes Association

In 2008, the American Diabetes Association had a lot to be proud of. Their accomplishments prove that one organization can have such a profound and positive affect (and effect) on so many lives. They should be proud of what they have accomplished, and have lain the groundwork for other to continue the fight for health and equality.

The ADA provided $42.5 million toward funding research to combat type 1 and type 2 diabetes in people of all ages and races. This research is key to all people affected by diabetes as it has a significant impact on prevention, treatment, and the search for a cure.

A significant legislative victory that was a major break through for the diabetes community came with the extension of two programs funding diabetes research, prevention, and education at the Indian Health Service (IHS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Fighting Discrimination Against People with Diabetes

Having worked in the field of Vocational Rehabilitation Counseling and Workers Compensation Adjusting and holding my Certified Rehabilitation Counselor’s license, This year’s passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act is another success in the fight against diabetes and the discrimination that may come with having a chronic disease. This legislation, which is the most significant piece of anti-discrimination legislation for people with diabetes since the original Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, restores the true intent of the landmark law and ensures that people with diabetes and other serious illnesses are protected from discrimination.

Creating A Healthy Environment

The American Diabetes Association works with the diabetes community to prevent and cure diabetes, and to improve the lives of all people with diabetes. To pursue this mission, the Association continues to provide people of all ages, ethnicity and backgrounds with access to credible, reliable information and support through community programs that reach people where they live, work, play and worship.

Apologies for no new posts the past two days, the 451 Press Servers were offline due to a glitch. The little hamsters that power the wheels took a rest and are now fully charged and ready to go.

This time has given me pause to thank all my readers during 2008 and promise to continue to post quality information each day. Bringing you quality information has been a pleasure and will continue to be. There is a dearth of great information out in the great world wide web and it is my pleasure to bring it to you. I try to bring you information I think that is relevant to you and that you can use in your everyday lives. During this time, and ongoing, I hope you will search the archives for timely information that will help you.

Let me know what areas you would like to see covered here, either in the comments or by shooting me an email. Any posts you like and would love to see again or more? Any posts that outraged you or thought irrelevant? Would you like to see this site on a social network, like facebook, twitter, linkedin, digg, and/or newsvine?

Thank you again, for sticking with me during 2008 and 2009 promises to be even better.

Controlling Type 2 Diabetes Through Diet and Exercise

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) reported that 21 million people, about 7 percent of the population, have diabetes. More than 90 percent have type 2, a combination of relative insulin deficiency and insulin resistance, a condition where the body fails to properly use insulin, according to the ADA.

Insulin, a hormone produced in the pancreas, is essential for converting sugar, starches, and other food into energy that the body draws upon for daily life.

The medical community has yet to pinpoint exactly why an individual develops diabetes, but holistic nutritionist, Luanne Pennesi said that pre-diabetes occurs when a person’s blood glucose or sugar levels are higher than normal, which over time taxes the body, particularly the pancreas, and if not treated through diet and exercise can lead to multiple chronic diseases.

Overweight conditions, she said, can also contribute to the onset of diabetes, but can often be controlled with a low-fat, low carbohydrate diet and daily exercise.

Here are Pennesi’s dietary tips for controlling diabetes:

— Eat lots of fresh organic veggies and fresh fruit that are either raw, sprouted, steamed, baked or stir-fried with little to no oil

— Drink water with a slice of lemon or lime, over sodas, sugary juices and sports drinks

— Munch on non-starchy veggies like spinach, broccoli and green beans

— Adopt a low carbohydrate diet by weaning out refined breads, pizza, pastas, cakes, cookies and candies

— Cut out all fried and fast foods

— Drink lots of fresh green vegetable juices to curb sugar cravings

— Eat healthy proteins like nuts, seeds, beans, lentils, veggie burgers, low mercury, wild caught fish and good quality protein powders for shakes

— Enjoy low glycemic foods like berries, lemons, limes, miso soup and squashes, which can be combined with any green vegetables and flavorful spices

— Choose whole grain foods over processed ones. For example, select brown rice instead of white rice with stir-fry or spelt, quinoa or brown rice spaghetti over the normal white flour and semolina-based variety

— Down-size your food portions

— Eliminate all high-calorie snacks.

—-Health centers use webcasting to share medical education with new audiences

Managing diabetes successfully depends in large part on personal lifestyle choices, and online education is making that easier this holiday season. Health centers across the nation are providing education to health professionals and their patients with Mediasite by Sonic Foundry, Inc. (Nasdaq: SOFO), the recognized market leader for rich media webcasting and knowledge management.

“We want to make sure people are getting the correct information and know that educational resources are available if they need individual care and Mediasite is part of how we do that,” said Jean Kostak, M.S., R.D., CD-N, C.D.E., a diabetes education specialist at the University of Connecticut Health Center. Anyone can now access such information through a quick online search of the Mediasite presentation catalog for the UConn Health Center’s Celebrate Women program.

“During the holiday season, there are more opportunities to get away from meal plans. Only the patients can control their own lifestyle changes, and people who do get educated about their illness are better able to manage it,” Kostak says.

At the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, diabetes education is also streamed online. The center webcasted all sessions of its recent school health conference, including presentations on child obesity and diabetes risk factors. The knowledge presented is now publicly available via the University’s Mediasite catalog for physicians to reference after the event. Visit the catalog here. (http://aisvid.uthscsa.edu/mediasite/Catalog/?cid=8b0310c8d1e7457e9e0b8c1ce63ffd41)

“The UConn Health Center and the University of Texas Health Sciences center are part of a growing movement among our Mediasite customers to embrace new approaches to sharing medical information and reach new audiences. We are proud to be their partners in providing online communication tools for medical education that hold the potential to truly transform the quality of healthcare,” said Sonic Foundry president and CEO Rimas Buinevicius.

Since its introduction in 2003, Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite has set the standard as a transformational communication medium for delivering critical information and sharing knowledge. The patented Mediasite webcasting and content management system quickly and cost-effectively automates the capture, management, delivery and search of rich media presentations that combine audio, video and accompanying graphics for live or on-demand viewing.

Diabetes specialist Sandee LaMarche sounds the alarm: Diabetes is spreading rapidly among Latinos in the United States.

In addition to the usual hiatus immigrants spend away from the doctor’s office, studies show that Latinos are two times as likely to develop diabetes than white Americans.

Nearly 90 percent of all LaMarche’s diabetic patients at the Nashua Area Health Center are Latino. Every day, LaMarche treats five new patients who have symptoms of the disease, and the numbers are increasing.

Diabetes is the inability of a person’s pancreas to produce a normal amount of insulin, the enzyme that breaks food down. If the illness remains untreated, blindness or loss of a limb can result. Obesity increases one’s risk of contracting diabetes.

According to the American Diabetes Association, the United States had 20.8 million people with the disease in 2006. That number jumped to 23.6 million last year. Diabetes is the fourth leading cause of death among Hispanic women and elderly. According to the medical Web site dlife.com, more than 10 percent of all Mexican-Americans older than 20 have the disease.

The rapid spread of diabetes in the country is so dramatic and widespread that even the illness nomenclature had to be changed.

“Among the younger population of America, type 2 diabetes (which used to strike only adults) was unheard of,” LaMarche said. “The disease used to be called juvenile or adult onset diabetes. Now, it’s type 1 and type 2, because all bets are off.”

The gift, the second-largest donation in the university’s history, could be a shot in the arm toward finding a cure for Type 1 diabetes.

Courtesy of Josephine Marcotty. Best Buy founder Richard Schulze and his family foundation will give $40 million to University of Minnesota researchers who are intent on finding a cure for Type 1 diabetes, the university announced Thursday.

The money, the second largest gift in university history, will be paid over five years and provide about half the $20 million the university will spend annually on diabetes research. Officials said they hope it will provide the financial boost needed to defeat the disease.

“We must not settle for anything less than a cure,” said Dr. Bernhard Hering, who will head the project. “We only need to declare it possible.”

Schulze and his daughter, Debra Schulze, 40, who has had Type 1 diabetes for 28 years, said they chose the university’s program over a number of other research organizations, both public and private, after studying programs around the world. They chose the university because it seemed to be closest to finding a cure and was less focused on finding new treatments for symptoms, she said.

As many as 3 million people in the United States live with Type 1 diabetes, in which the immune system attacks islet cells in the pancreas, destroying the body’s ability to produce insulin and regulate blood sugar.

Quirky Thanksgiving trivia:

In 1953, someone at Swanson severely overestimated the amount of turkey Americans would consume that Thanksgiving. With 260 tons of frozen birds to get rid of, a company salesman named Gerry Thomas ordered 5,000 aluminum trays, recruited an assembly line of women armed with spatulas and ice-cream scoops and began creating mini-feasts of turkey, corn-bread dressing, peas and sweet potatoes — creating the first-ever TV dinner. Thomas later said he got the idea from neatly packaged airplane food.

Football & Feastin’

Thanksgiving is ruled by two very powerful f-words: “food” and “football.” Nearly as old as the sport itself, the tradition of watching football on Thanksgiving began in 1876, when the newly formed American Intercollegiate Football Association held its first championship game. Less than a decade later, more than 5,000 club, college and high school football teams held games on Thanksgiving, with match-ups between Princeton and Yale drawing more than 40,000 fans out from their dining rooms. 1934 marked the first NFL game held on Thanksgiving when the Detroit Lions took on the Chicago Bears. The Lions have played on Thanksgiving ever since — except, of course, when the team was called away to serve during World War II.

Franksgiving

FDR learned the hard way not to mess with some traditions. In 1939, the President declared that Americans should celebrate the annual feast one week early, hoping the decision would spur retail sales during the Great Depression. But Americans did not react kindly to the New Deal meal. Some took to the streets while others took to name-calling; the mayor of Atlantic City solved the controversy by declaring his residents would simply enjoy two meals — Thanksgiving and “Franksgiving.” After two years of squabbling (or gobbling, as it were), Congress adopted a resolution in 1941 setting the fourth Thursday of November as the legal holiday

Mary Had a Little Thanksgiving Obession

The woman who wrote the classic nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” also played an integral role in making Thanksgiving a national holiday. After a 17-year letter-writing campaign, magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale finally convinced President Abraham Lincoln to issue an 1863 decree recognizing the historic tradition.

Americans at the Abbey

In 1942, London’s Westminster Abbey held Thanksgiving services for U.S. troops stationed in England. More than 3,500 soldiers filled the church’s pews to sing America, the Beautiful and The Star-Spangled Banner — the first time in the church’s 900-year history that a foreign army was invited to take over the grounds. It was an ironic gesture given the holiday’s origins as a festival for pilgrims fleeing religious tyranny in Britain.

Read more by clicking above. Happy Thanksgiving!

Study estimates financial toll from rapidly increasing disease

As diabetes is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most common diseases, its financial cost is mounting, too, to well over $200 billion a year in the U.S. alone.

A new study, released Tuesday exclusively to The Associated Press, puts the total at $218 billion last year — the first comprehensive estimate of the financial toll diabetes takes, according to Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk A/S, which paid for the study.

That figure includes direct medical care costs, from insulin and pills for controlling patients’ blood sugar to amputations and hospitalizations, plus indirect costs such as lost productivity, disability and early retirement.

The study, conducted by the Lewin Group consultants, estimates costs to society for people known to have Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes at $174.4 billion combined, a total previously reported by Novo Nordisk, the world’s top producer of insulin and the maker of diabetes pills such as NovoNorm and Prandin. That study was done with the American Diabetes Association.

The new study adds estimates for people who haven’t been diagnosed yet ($18 billion), women who develop diabetes temporarily during pregnancy ($636 million) and those on track to develop diabetes, an increasingly common condition called pre-diabetes ($25 billion).

“Diabetes has not seen a decline or even a plateauing, and the death rate from diabetes continues to rise,” said Dana Haza, senior director of the National Changing Diabetes Program, an effort Novo Nordisk began in 2005 to improve diabetes care and prevention in the U.S.

“The numbers just keep going higher and higher, and what we want to say is, ‘It’s time for government and businesses to focus on it,’” said Haza, who believes diabetes will be the country’s biggest health problem in the future, worsened by the obesity epidemic.

Novo Nordisk is to present the data Tuesday at a health care conference for corporate executives and then plans to publish a full report in a professional journal. The calculations are based on numbers from sources including databases on treatment of people with commercial insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, federal public health surveys and other sources.

There are many health benefits to losing weight, but now new research suggests that shedding the pounds could make you smarter, reports CBS station WFOR-TV in Miami.

In the U.S. where nearly 2 out of 3 Americans are overweight or obese, the demand for gastric bypass is booming. The procedure boasts a host of benefits including improving sleep apnea, lowering high blood pressure and cholesterol levels and possibly curing diabetes. Now new research suggests it could make recipients smarter.

Researchers at Stanford University found patients who had undergone gastric bypass surgery show improved abilities in memory, problem solving and attention to details.

“We saw a pretty big improvement across the board for these people,” said Dr. John Morton who headed up the research. “This is the first study of its kind, so it’s going to open up a lot of other avenues for research.”

So why the brain boost?

The research team isn’t sure but their study’s findings suggest the answer may lie in belly fat which can release harmful chemicals into the body which trigger inflammation. Reduce the fat and the brain will benefit.

“We know the gastric bypass really improves insulin resistance it cures diabetes 82 percent of the time and at the end of the day that’s really the main reason why patients had such a big improvement in cognition after surgery,” Dr. Morton said.

This study only looked at brain power in people who lost weight following weight-loss surgery, but if you lost the same amount of weight by dieting without surgery, experts said it would likely have the same effect.

Nearly 140,000 gastric bypass surgeries are done each year in the United States.

The following summarizes news coverage of diabetes rates among minorities in Hawaii and Michigan.

* Hawaii: About 8.6% of Hawaii’s population, or 110,000 people, are thought to have diabetes and 39,000 of those individuals have not yet been diagnosed, according to a report by the state Health Department, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reports. According to the Star-Bulletin, type 2 diabetes is often linked to obesity, poor diet and physical inactivity, but ethnicity also plays a role. Native Hawaiians, Filipinos and Japanese have a higher risk for developing the disease than whites, according to the health department. Native Hawaiians also have the highest death rates related to diabetes, according to the Star-Bulletin (Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 10/28).

Michigan: About 7.9% of adults in Michigan have diabetes, and the disease is highest among blacks, according to the American Diabetes Association, the Detroit News reports. Nearly one in five blacks in the state have the condition. The local ADA chapter has partnered with Eli Lilly for its Fearless African-Americans Connected and Empowered campaign to raise awareness and prevention efforts among the group (Taylor, Detroit News, 10/31).

Centering supper around a fish dish at least twice a week might help people with diabetes lower their risk of kidney disease, a new study suggested.

In the November issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, British researchers analyzed the records of more than

22,000 middle-aged and older English men and women who were part of a large European cancer study. Researchers wanted to examine the effect of eating fish on kidney disease.

The study subjects had answered questionnaires about their diet habits, including how much fish they ate weekly, and had provided urine samples, which were analyzed for a protein called albumin, an indicator of kidney damage.

The researchers reported that of the 517 study subjects who had diabetes (mostly Type 2), those who, on average, ate less than one serving of fish each week were four times as likely to have albumin in their urine as people with diabetes who ate fish twice weekly.

“Protein in the urine is one of the earliest signs of kidney disease, a serious complication of diabetes,” said study co-author Amanda Adler, an epidemiologist with the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, England.

Adler speculated that the nutrient content of fish might affect kidney function and improve blood glucose control. But what kind of fish makes the biggest health splash wasn’t determined.

Susan Spratt, assistant professor of medicine in the division of endocrinology at Duke University Medical Center, said it’s too early to recommend diet changes based on the findings, noting that cause and effect are hard to determine in this type of study. “People who eat fish might have other healthier habits,” she said.

To prove fish could be a kidney disease-fighting factor in diabetes, clinical trials would be required where people with diabetes ate fish and others did not, she said.

“But it wouldn’t hurt patients to eat more fish,” said Spratt, who recommends fish oil to lower triglycerides in her diabetes patients.

For dinner, stick with low-fat broiled and baked recipes, she said.