Hispanics don’t let diabetes dampen their day

Feeling more empowered about metabolic disease has given Hispanics high diabetes-related stress. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Hispanic subgroups have some of the highest diabetes rates in the United States, and as a collective whole, Hispanics see a rate of diabetes at 16.9 percent compared to the rest of the U.S. population which see an 11.3 percent prevalence rate.

Despite the numbers, new research shows Hispanics and other minorities living with diabetes, such as positive psychological well-being, better quality of life, and a feeling of empowerment when it comes to their metabolic disease compared to non-Hispanic whites.

SEE ALSO: The health data that shows Hispanics can’t be lumped into one group

Minority groups do, however, still suffer higher levels of diabetes-related stress, which may be one reason for health outcome disparities, say researchers.

“Despite the fact that minority populations are at increased risk for diabetes-related physical health problems and complications, minority groups in this study reported better quality of life and increased empowerment compared with non-Hispanic whites, but they struggle with diabetes distress,” said Professor Mark Peyrot, principle investigator of the study in a press release.

“It is important that diabetes care teams be aware of the differences among the diverse populations living with the disease in the United States in order to tailor their approaches to improve the psychological well-being of people with diabetes.”

(Photo: Shutterstock)

More specifically, researchers observed that:

• Minorities receiving patient-centered care reported the greatest feelings of empowerment concerning diabetes.
• Those individuals who felt more empowered reported higher levels of stress regarding weight, low blood sugar and discrimination. This may suggest awareness brings about diabetes stress by providing more factors for an individual to focus on in regards to health.
• All three minority groups evaluated–Hispanics, African Americans and Chinese Americans–reported higher levels of diabetes-related stress compared to non-Hispanic whites.
• African Americans reported the most positive psychological outcomes, including well-being, quality of life, and impact of diabetes on various aspects of daily life, and the lowest distress of the three minority groups.

The findings were gathered from data pulled by the Novo Nordisk’s Diabetes Attitudes, Wishes and Needs 2 (DAWN2™) study, published recently in Current Medical Research and Opinion.

“DAWN2™ represents Novo Nordisk’s commitment to identifying and addressing gaps in diabetes care beyond providing appropriate medicines,” said Todd Hobbs, US Chief Medical Officer, Novo Nordisk Inc.

“The psychological impact and burden of diabetes on people living with the disease, especially minority groups, is not fully recognized. We continue to learn from the DAWN2™ study and hope that these insights will bring light to many important issues facing the diabetes community.”

Experts suggest the findings further encourage health care providers to look for culturally-relevant ways to treat diabetes. While awareness about the disease had certainly led to minorities feeling empowered about their options, it has also given them more reason to worry.

Health care providers must be aware that diabetes-related stress is a real concern even among people who have a greater understanding of metabolic disease.

SEE ALSO: Mexican-Americans have the highest diabetes risk among Hispanics

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‘Cantinflas’ Movie Premiere (8-29-14)

Aug 28, 2014 

By Daniel Lastra

The legendary Mexican actor and comedian Mario Moreno, popularly known as “Cantinflas,” is honored with a biopic out in theaters August 29th.

Diabetes Is Already Psychologically Demanding, So Cut the Stigma Too

 

By Matt Petronzio

When Rachel Kerstetter woke up the morning of Aug. 11, 2011, she knew something was wrong. She had risen multiple times during the night. She was extremely thirsty and her vision was blurry. She needed to go to the bathroom more often than usual.
She could trace some of the symptoms back a couple of weeks, but she thought it was just stress. She and her husband, Brad, had just married that May, and were adjusting to life as newlyweds; they were both searching for jobs right out of college; and Kerstetter was dealing with family drama, all while her father was hospitalized with cancer.
But after she experienced nausea and vomiting that particular night, Brad made her go to the doctor — and it ended up saving her life.
Kerstetter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease that causes a person's pancreas to produce little or no insulin — a hormone that converts sugar into the energy we need to survive. Doctors found high glucose and ketones in her urine, and after a three-night stay in the hospital, she was released with basic instructions for insulin shots, along with some dietary guidelines. For the past few years, she has used an insulin pump and a continuous glucose monitor to keep her blood sugar in check.
But even after her third "diaversary" earlier this month, Kerstetter, now 25, continues to deal with a less talked-about side effect of diabetes: stigma.

See also: 7 Mobile Apps to Help Manage Diabetes

As with other diseases, such as mental illness, a general lack of information causes many to misunderstand and judge those with diabetes. People often combine the disease's different types under one umbrella term, and hold various misconceptions, like the idea that diabetes results from unhealthy eating habits.
"People assume I have type 2 because I was diagnosed as an adult, or they ask if I used to be fat and if that's why I have diabetes," Kerstetter, who weighs 95 pounds and has always been small, tells Mashable.

People often ask her if she has "the bad kind of diabetes."

People often ask her if she has "the bad kind of diabetes." To which she says, "There is no good kind."
Type 1 diabetes used to be called "juvenile diabetes," because diagnoses usually (but not always) occur in young children and adolescents. The term drives Kerstetter crazy.
"Many people have the idea that it can be outgrown, and I have been asked if my diabetes will ever go away when I'm 'done growing' ... [It] puts type 1 diabetes into a neat little box called 'childhood illness,'" she says.

An insulin pump, like the one pictured, delivers insulin through a catheter In a steady dose and as directed. A small needle allows the catheter to be inserted in fatty tissue, and it's taped in place.

Image: Flickr, Alan Levine

In contrast, type 2, formerly known as "adult onset diabetes," occurs when a person's body resists the effects of insulin or doesn't produce enough insulin to maintain a normal blood glucose level. Obesity and diet, which come with their own stigmas, are risk factors that can trigger type 2 diabetes; however, genetics, ethnicity and age play a larger role. With both type 1 and type 2, a person inherits a predisposition to the disease, while environmental factors, such as viruses or obesity, can trigger it. Latinos, American Indians and Asian-Americans are more at risk for type 2 diabetes than whites are, and the risk increases with age.
There's also gestational diabetes, surgically induced diabetes, chemically induced diabetes and latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA, or type 1.5).
According to the latest National Diabetes Statistics Report,

29.1 million Americans had diabetes in 2012. Of those 29.1 million people, only 21 million were diagnosed

29.1 million Americans had diabetes in 2012. Of those 29.1 million people, only 21 million were diagnosed (5% of whom had type 1).
That means 8.1 million were undiagnosed. Martin J. Abrahamson, medical director and senior vice president at Harvard's Joslin Diabetes Center, attributes this to the fact that many people don't know they have type 2, as the disease often doesn't have visible symptoms.
But stigma can prevent people from getting diagnosed and seeking proper treatment, too. Some diabetics may avoid taking shots and tests in public (a very dangerous negligence) in fear of being different. Patients routinely face challenges in their social lives, prejudice in the workplace (employers may think people with diabetes are unfit to perform certain tasks) and an increased risk of depression.
And in the digital age, people easily spread misinformation and stigma online with ignorant memes, though people with diabetes often fight them with blogs and Facebook pages with memes of their own.

If you or someone you love struggles with diabetes, please call us at (206) 909-8022, or visit www.RameyNutrition.com to go beyond Diabetes as an identity and regain your life!

Shift work linked to greater diabetes risk

By Shereen Lehman

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People who work night shifts, or constantly changing shifts are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes compared to non-shift workers, suggests a new analysis of previous studies.

The risk was highest for men and people who worked rotating shifts, but the reasons for those differences remain unclear, researchers say.

“Shift work is very common in modern society,” the study's senior author Zuxun Lu told Reuters Health in an email.

“Over the past decades, a few epidemiological studies have assessed the association between shift work and the risk of diabetes mellitus with the inconsistent results,” said Lu, a researcher at Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China.

The lack of a definitive summary of previous results prompted Lu's team to assess what’s known, they write in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

About 15 million Americans are shift workers, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And diabetes affects about 30 million Americans, or about 9 percent of the total population.

Lu and colleagues combined and re-analyzed the data from 12 previous studies that looked at the association between shift work and chances of developing diabetes. The studies included a total of 226,652 participants and 14,595 people with diabetes.

The studies were published between 1983 and 2013. Six of the studies were conducted in Japan, with two each from the U.S. and Sweden and one each from Belgium and China.

Shift work includes working nights, evenings, rotating shifts or irregular shifts – anything other than working typical daytime hours, the authors note.

Based on their analysis, the risk of diabetes was increased by 9 percent overall for shift workers, compared to people who had never been exposed to shift work.

Male shift workers had a 28 percent greater risk of developing diabetes than their female counterparts. And people who worked rotating shifts had a 42 percent greater risk of diabetes compared to non-shift workers.

It’s not known how long the participants in those studies had been shift workers, which limits the authors’ ability to interpret their results.

The new analysis doesn’t prove that shift work causes diabetes or explain how it might do so, they acknowledge.

“More prospective cohort studies with long follow-up periods are warranted to replicate our findings and reveal the underlying biological mechanism,” Lu said.

He speculated that shift work may interfere with eating and sleeping patterns and disrupt circadian rhythms.

“Some studies have shown that insufficient sleep and poor sleep quality may develop and exacerbate insulin resistance,” Lu said.

Insulin resistance is a condition in which the body doesn’t use insulin properly to process blood sugar. It’s also sometimes called “pre-diabetes.”

In addition, previous studies show that shift work is associated with weight gain, increase in appetite and body fat, which are major risk factors for diabetes Lu and his coauthors write.

“The overall literature in this subject right now has been fairly convincing that there is in fact an association between a misalignment of circadian rhythm and risk for diabetes,” Dr. Peter Butler told Reuters Health.

Butler directs the Larry L. Hillblom Islet Research Center at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Butler, who was not involved in the study, said he wasn’t surprised that the authors found rotating shifts tended to have more of an effect. “If your circadian rhythms aren’t synchronized, it’s not at all surprising that bad things would happen.”.

But, Butler said, it’s not a problem for most people and that most people on night shifts don’t get diabetes.

“Probably about 20 percent of us are vulnerable for diabetes, and what I think probably happens is the people who get diabetes in relation to shift work are the ones who were vulnerable to getting diabetes anyway,” he said.

“It’s not like if you are one of the 80 percent who’s lucky enough to not be vulnerable and you go on shift work you are now going to get diabetes - it’s more a question if you are one of the unlucky ones who are predisposed to diabetes, then shift work may nudge you over that fence,” Butler added.

He said avoiding rotating shifts might be a good idea for people who have a strong family history of diabetes. But people who are at risk and have to work rotating shifts can still reduce the likelihood that they’ll get diabetes.

“You can counter the risks for diabetes,” he said. “There are many risks that come into play and circadian misalignment is just one risk, but if you counter that by regular exercise and good diet, you’d reduce that risk very substantially.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1s4yYnh Occupational and Environmental Medicine, online July 16, 2014.

Arizona siblings hike 221 miles for diabetes research

PHOENIX -- Fifteen-year-old Haley Maurice and her 22-year-old brother Ethan embarked on a 221-mile trek across the Sierra Nevada to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

 The siblings set out on July 16, following the John Muir Trail from the Yosemite Valley to the summit of Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the continental United States.

They hiked an average of 10 miles a day for three weeks and encountered extreme weather conditions.

"We were up on the top of Mount Whitney at the end of our hike, a little above 14,000 feet, and we got stuck in about two feet of snow," Ethan said. "We're up there in rain jackets and shorts and yeah, it was pretty extreme."

Haley also experienced 77 high blood sugar levels and 56 low levels, pricking her finger 103 times throughout the trip and using 1,598 units of insulin.

She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes eight years ago and has been involved with JDRF ever since.

"Ethan was up at NAU this past year ... and we were Skyping, and he was telling me about this trail that he wanted to hike," Haley said. "And the next day I'm like, 'Ethan, I want to hike this with you,' and then the day after that I said, 'Ethan, we're raising money for JDRF.' "

Haley consumed almost two liters of honey over the three-week trip to keep her blood sugar up.

"So much physical activity, intake of carbohydrates -- it gets pretty difficult to manage," she said. "It was a lot of work and just walking every day. Just keep going."

The Maurices returned home a couple weeks ago but are still working hard to reach their goal of raising $221,000 for JDRF, which represents $1,000 per mile of the hike. They have raised about $7,000 so far.

If you or someone you love has diabetes, and wants to live life free of it, please call Ramey Nutrition at: (206) 909-8022 or visit us at www.rameynutrition.com

Latest Diabetes Research: Soon, iPhones will measure glucose levels in diabetics

Fed up of checking your sugar levels using the painful finger-prick test? Soon measuring sugar levels could be as easy as using an iPhone.

This breakthrough research from American Chemical Society’s (ACS’), reveals a new protein that would allow diabetics to check their blood sugar from their iPhones. Sylvia Daunert, Ph.D, from University of Miami designed a protein that will make sugar level testing less painful with high precision.

She invented the ‘designer protein’ by changing the genetic code that senses glucose levels in the body. She further modified it by adding synthetic immuno acids to give protein better sensing capabilities and a longer life. Daunert asserted that diabetic patients always need to prick themselves several times in order to check the glucose levels but that won’t be required much now after her ‘designer protein’ comes into use.

Daunert said that they could not use their bio sensors that they just developed and reported and infact look at their iPhones and could check the levels of glucose in the patients. 

CDC Warns 40 Percent Of Americans Will Develop Diabetes: ‘We Didn’t Expect It To Increase This Much’ BY SAM P.K. COLLINS

In this Friday, March 1, 2013 file photo, Chan Lai Ly, right, has his mouth examined by Honghue Duong, a physician’s assistant, as part of a regular check-up related to his diabetes at International Community Health Services in Seattle.

A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report predicts that nearly 40 percent of Americans — particularly people of color and women — will develop type 2 diabetes at some point in their lives. Researchers estimated the trends using medical information and death certificates of 600,000 U.S. adults between 1985 and 2011.

The findings, published in the Aug. 13 issue of The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, come on the heels of another report that designated diabetes and obesity as two of the greatest public health challenges of the 21st century.

"We weren’t necessarily surprised that it increased, but we didn’t expect it to increase this much,” lead author of the study Edward Gregg told MedicineNet.com. “Forty percent is a humbling number.”Type 2 diabetes — the most common form of the chronic illness — remains the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. People with type 2 diabetes often experience high blood sugar levels, skin infections, fatigue, and increased urination. Treatment costs have exploded by more than 40 percent between 2007 and 2012 and now stand at more than $245 billion, according to the American Diabetes Association. Experts have long tied diabetes to obesity, lack of physical activity, and the consumption of high-fat, processed foods. People of color — particularly those with a family history of diabetes — have the greatest risk of developing the disease, especially if they live in suburbs, areas where amenities aren’t in close proximity and people walk less.

A shortage of endocrinologists — medical professionals who treat hormone-related conditions including diabetes, obesity, and thyroid disorders — has also played a part in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in recent years. A June study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism highlighted an endocrinologist shortage of 1,500 for adults and 100 for children. Wait times for non-emergency visits also average 37 days, according to a 2012 surveyconducted by the Endocrine Society. Although researchers predicted that the treatment gap would close by 2016 for children, they said that treatment of adults would most likely remain an issue.

“It’s rending people incapable of enjoying a good quality of life. It’s raising health care costs at an alarming rate,” Dr. Minisha Sood, an endocrinologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, told MedicineNet.com. “And frankly, there aren’t enough health care professionals to deal with what’s coming down the pike. We’re looking at clogging up a health care system that’s already stretched to its limits.”

Under the Affordable Care Act, adults with high blood pressure and pregnant women receive free diabetes screenings. Diabetic people can also develop behavioral and lifestyle changes with a counselor free of charge. Additionally, no lifetime dollar limit on coverage exists for treatment of diabetes. While that’s good news, nearly five million Americans would not be able to use these services because more than 20 governors have not approved Medicaid expansion in their states. As a result, several hospitals and clinics stand to losemore than $423 billion in federal funding over the next decade, dimming the prospects of adequate care for people with type 2 diabetes and other chronic illnesses.

If you or someone you love struggles with Diabetes, please call us at (206) 909-8022, or visit us at www.RameyNutrition.com