We are officially announcing the Black History Diabetes Screening at the Baldwin Hills Mall!  If you have friends and family in the Los Angeles area encourage them to come and get tested!

Diabetes currently is a leading cause of death by disease among African-Americans and is the leading cause of blindness, kidney failure and amputation.

While diabetes affects nearly 3 million African-Americans–half of those with the disease don’t know it!

Knowledge is power! Get Tested!

Black History Month Diabetic Screening

When: Saturday, February 25, 2012

Where: Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall

3650 West Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90008

Time: 12:00-4:00 pm

Cost: Free

Bring family and friends. Nobody is too young to be tested!

Together let’s end the cycle of Diabetes in our community!

For the past several days, I examined my feelings about Paula Deen’s announcement of her diabetic condition. I have come to the conclusion that I really don’t care if she is diabetic or not. Unlike most Type 2 diabetics, she has access to the finest of medical care, a sizable bank account, and plenty of people to comfort her. It is not good news to hear that someone has a chronic disease. However, it was totally classless how her diabetic announcement was presented to the public. I am a type 2 diabetic that takes oral medications and injects insulin. I have been doing this for the last 4-5 years. Why should a person’s health condition be teased and taunted to the public like a Desperate Housewives cliffhanger? This was more about media hype than it was a human interest story. She could have made her announcement on a legitimate news show and explained how it has changed her life. Most celebrities go to great lengths to hide health imperfections in fear of their career. This was just media hype surrounded by her endorsement of a new diabetic drug. In the words of the SNL Church Lady, “How convenient.” This is clearly not an opportunity to help people. What matters is the type of impression that is left on diabetics and her fans. Diabetics suffer from myths and false information portrayed by the media already. Then to have her diagnosed cloaked with the rumor of product endorsement is a bitter pill to swallow. It is hard for me to have sympathy for a celebrity who uses the media machine to promote themselves when they are so full of hypocrisy.

Let’s be frank, Ms. Deen is not a spring chicken and is a classic text book example of a type 2 diabetic. She was going to develop diabetes just by shear progression in age and lifestyle. Ultimately, Ms. Deen will not make the effort to bring diabetic awareness to the masses. Like most type 2 diabetics she is in severe denial about her situation and clearly doesn’t realize that she has to change more than “sweet tea” to have proper diabetic management. I really doubt if she knows any more about diabetes than what the doctor tell her. She can’t even make a commitment on live television that she will change some of her cooking ways or at least offer healthier alternatives. Giving money to the American Diabetes Association is a nice gesture disguised as another publicity stunt with no meaning. I am sure when the dust settles she will go back to cooking her lard driven comfort cuisine.

Ms. Deen is extremely lucky to have a fan based that is willing to support her. What her fan base does not deserve is a half-baked admission shrouded as a spring board into peddling prescription drugs. She has squandered a perfect opportunity to help educate people.

Individuals treated for bothdepression and Type 2 diabetes have better medication compliance and experience significant improvements in depression and blood sugar levels compared to those receiving typical  treatments, according to a new study out of the University of Pennsylvania.

Over 60 percent of patients who received both treatments along with a short period of intervention to encourage adherence to prescribed medication regimens experienced improved blood sugar levels and 58 percent had fewer depression symptoms, compared to only 36 percent and 31 percent, respectively, of patients who received regular care.

Depression is a known risk factor for diabetes, and diabetes also increases the risk for the development of depression. Depression is frequently found in patients with diabetes, and it tends to contribute to poor adherence to medication routines, which hinders diabetes management.

“Though research demonstrates the link between depression and diabetes, few integrated programs are being implemented in practice,” said lead author Hillary Bogner, MD, MSCE, an assistant professor in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Our results demonstrate that integrated treatment for both conditions, combined with a brief program focused on adherence for primary care patients with Type 2 diabetes and depression can result in a significant improvement in clinical outcomes.”

“We hope the findings will encourage the adoption of adherence programs aimed at improving outcomes.”

For the study, researchers randomly assigned volunteers to integrated care or usual care groups. Integrated treatment combined typical primary care with a brief medication adherence program.

Patients and primary care physicians worked with integrated care managers to identify and talk about possible potential medication regimen problems, such as the cost of medications, or a lack of social support.

Individualized programs were developed to improve adherence toantidepressants and diabetes medication. By attaching electronic monitors to pill bottles, researchers kept track of the precise date and time participants took their prescribed medications over the 12-week period.

In the end, 60.9 percent of subjects who received the integrated approach had improved blood sugar levels, compared to only 35.7 percent of patients who received only the usual primary care. Also, patients in the integrated care group were more likely to show fewer depression symptoms in comparison with patients in the usual care group (58.7 percent vs. 30.7 percent, respectively).

“Our study calls for a greater emphasis within healthcare systems on the development and promotion of clinical programs to enhance medication adherence, particularly among patients with chronic medical conditions and depression,” said Dr. Bogner.

“An integrated approach to depression and type 2 diabetes treatment may facilitate adoption in practices with competing demands for limited resources.”

The study is published in the January/February issue of The Annals of Family Medicine.

Source:  University of Pennsylvania

By TRACI PEDERSEN Associate News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on January 14, 2012

I am glad Dr. Watkins is doing something on health.  He normally spends his time on political issues and other topics.  I would like to see more articles from him about health.

Pepsi Co., facing a lawsuit from a man who claims to have found a mouse in his Mountain Dew can, has an especially creative, if disgusting, defense: their soda would have dissolved a dead mousebefore the man could have found it An Illinois man sued Pepsi in 2009 after he claims he “spat out  the soda to reveal a dead mouse,” the Madison County Record reports. He claims he sent the mouse to Pepsi, which then “destroyed” the remains after he allowed them to test it, according to his complaint. Most shudder-worthy, however, is that Pepsi’s lawyers also found experts to testify, based on the state of the remains sent to them that, “the mouse would have dissolved in the soda had it been in the can from the time of its bottling until the day the plaintiff drank it,” according to theRecord. (It would have become a “jelly-like substance,” according to Pepsi, adds LegalNewsline.) This seems like a winning-the-battle-while-surrendering-the-war kind of strategy that hinges on winning the argument that “our product is essentially a can of battery acid.” The lawyers still appear to be lawyering behind the scenes but we cannot wait for this to come to trial (though we think a trial is about as likely as the chances of us “Doing the Dew” again).

For the many Americans genetically programmed to add pounds, the effort to lose weight can seem doomed from the get-go. Mix in other factors no one can change — age, race, birth order — and the struggle becomes even tougher.

Though innate biology does play a role in whether someone tends to gain weight, individuals can work with their biology to achieve weight goals, say obesity experts. Step one, however, is to know what you’re up against. Step two is knowing how not to trip the genes you’ve been dealt.

Genetics: ”About half our propensity to gain weight or not is inherited,” says Dr. Steve Smith, an obesity expert and scientific director of Sanford-Burnham Translational Research Institute for Metabolism and Diabetes, in Orlando. Though genes haven’t changed much in thousands of years, we have seen a rapid change in the environment, and that has interacted with our genetic propensity toward obesity. “Your genes won’t make you fat unless you put them in the wrong environment.” In other words, obesity is a result of the way certain genes interact with an environment stacked against them.

Ethnicity: ”The prevalence of obesity is higher among African-Americans and Hispanics because of how their genes and cultures interact with our environment,” Smith says. From a demographics standpoint, the rise in these minority populations has contributed to the uptick in the nation’s obesity rate. Black women are at the highest risk of any group, according to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health. Four out of five black women in the U.S. are overweight or obese.

Why certain racial groups have more obesity is a question researchers at the National Institutes of Health have been working to answer. For 30 years, NIH researchers have studied the Mexican Pima Indians in Arizona, who have an exceptionally high rate of obesity. Their obesity problem didn’t start until late in the 19th century, when American settlers diverted their water supply and upset their agricultural traditions. As their diets became more westernized, their obesity rates soared.

Hormones: ”Obesity is indeed a hormonal disorder. That idea should never have been refuted,” says science writer Gary Taubes, author of “Why We Get Fat.” The main hormone involved is insulin, which regulates fat accumulation; however, a whole bevy of other hormones contribute to weight regulation, Smith says.

Metabolism: Largely determined by a person’s lean-tissue mass, metabolism is what makes you burn calories even at rest. It’s why some people can’t keep weight on and others can’t seem to lose it. A person whose body composition is high in fat and low in lean muscle will burn energy more slowly than someone who has a lot of lean muscle. Taubes pictures the differences in metabolism this way: Imagine everyone’s body as having a needle on a gas gauge. On one end is E is for energy, on the other F for fat. Those whose needles point toward E burn more fuel and store less as fat. Those whose needles point toward F store more calories as fat and burn fewer.

Fat mothers: ”If your mom was obese while she was pregnant with you, you’re marked,” says Philip Wood, professor at Sanford-Burnham Research Institute in Lake Nona. “You will have an uphill battle fighting off excess weight and its ill effects, even if you’re adopted and raised by slim parents.” The rising field of epigenetics is revealing how diet and the environment are reprogramming the genes we’re dealt at conception. The mechanisms likely involve maternal circulating hormones and glucose levels, says Tracy Bale, associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. These effects can be handed down to the next generation, she adds. Women who have had sugar-laden diets, who are heavy and insulin-resistant create an environment in utero that programs babies to prepare for life in a high-carb environment. In response, the fetus overproduces pancreatic beta cells, which make insulin. To turn that around, pregnant moms need to keep circulating blood-sugar levels under control.

Birth order: Siblings born later in the lineup tend to be fatter than firstborns or those born earlier, Smith says. Researchers think this is because moms tend to weigh more with each pregnancy, and therefore have more circulating insulin with each subsequent pregnancy. This is in turn passed along to the baby and future generations.

First Blog of the new year!

Believe me I got tipsy and lost my voice and some how made it home!

Back to reality…..

This should be the year of EVOLUTION and not resolutions.  Resolutions sound so final where as EVOLUTION gives people the sense of continuation.  When a person is EVOLVING they are in a state of progression. We as Type 2 diabetics are always in progress and are striving to do great things everyday.  We never stop learning about ourselves and our body.  Make this year a time to start EVOLVING into a better place.  Take baby steps and try to control your life and environment.  Don’t worry about things that are not under your control.  There are so many other things that need my need attention.  Don’t sweat the small stuff.  Get your friends and family on board to help in your EVOLUTION.  If you don’t feel this way than write down in a journal why this is uncomfortable.   Don’t get depressed and quit testing because the glucose levels are not optimal.  Diabetics love giving advice!

Many Type 2 diabetics suffer from self neglect.  Make this the year that the self neglect comes to and end.   We need to EVOLVE into the thinking that our bodies and minds are important too and need to be nurtured.  When there is not anybody around to nurture us ….we have to do it ourselves.  Put energy towards finding an outlet to be nurtured.  There should not be any guilt in making other people wait  or not being at your children’s beck and call.   Patience is a virtue and its has not hurt anybody.   I was looking an old episode of Dr. Phil and I would have to agree with the advice he gave a woman that neglected her health to take care of her children and everybody else.  I have preached this this same advice to so many other people that use their children and outside activities to not take time to take of themselves.  A person/mother/father isn’t doing any favors to anybody if they do not have their health.  It should not take a disease like diabetes to make a person realize this fact.  Again make this the year of EVOLUTIONS!

Workers Want Employers to Help Them Stay Healthy

People want their employers to help them get healthy, two new reports from Canada and the U.S. suggest.

While many companies are already using a combination of workplace health services and financial incentives to improve the health of their employees, workers in both countries said they want more help from their employers in getting and staying healthy.

To improve employee health and productivity, employers are increasingly offering such programs as biometric screenings (which include cholesterol and blood sugar tests), health risk assessments, on-site clinics and pharmacies and employee assistance programs, according to a report from Aon Hewitt, a human resource consulting and outsourcing firm. Making sure that employees and their dependents are aware of these programs is a weakness for most companies, according to the research.

In 2011, more than one-third (36 percent) of consumers did not participate in any health program or service offered by their employer, the research found. Among the programs that workers did participate in, blood tests or biometric screenings were the most popular (61 percent), followed by health risk assessments (57 percent).

Despite low participation, when workers do take part in these programs, satisfaction is extremely high, the research found. Almost all (97 percent) workers who took part in blood tests or used an on-site clinic pharmacy were satisfied, while almost as many (92 percent) were satisfied with the health risk assessment.

Still, many employees don’t feel their employers are fully supportive in helping them get and stay healthy, the research showed. A majority of workers (60 percent) think their company is only moderately-to-not-supportive when it comes to their efforts to be healthy.

“Employers may be missing the mark when it comes to health improvement programs being offered to workers,” said study researcher Cathy Tripp, managing principal of health and benefits at Aon Hewitt.  ”Workers need to see that their efforts to become healthy are supported by the company. Developing a culture where leaders care and support healthful living communicates to workers that this matters to the company.”

Health incentives

Offering incentives for participating in health and productivity programs is one method of encouraging employees to take part in wellness programs and to stay healthy.

It’s become common practice in the U.S., and a new survey by global professional services company Towers Watson shows that the number of organizations implementing this strategy in Canada is on the rise, too.

“We are seeing employers increasingly realize the importance that health and productivity programs can play in their efforts to control health care costs and maintain a productive work force,” said Wendy Poirier, health and group benefits leader for Towers Watson, in Canada. “While the outcomes of any one tactic can’t be guaranteed, high-effectiveness companies with thoughtful multifaceted programs are reaping clear returns on their investments in work force health.”

One of the health problem areas in which employers need to be better focused is mental health, the Towers Watson survey found.

It found that despite growing awareness, mental health conditions continue to be the most common reason for both short-term and long-term disability claims in Canada.

Most organizations participating in the Towers Watson survey report that employee stress is a major and growing business issue, and many are planning to adapt their organizational health strategies for the next two years to include a focus on mental, as well as physical, health.

Workers participating in the survey cited excessive workloads, lack of work/life balance, unclear or conflicting job expectations and inadequate staffing as the top sources of workplace stress. The survey results indicate that the prevalence of each of these stressors has risen significantly over the last two years. For example,  nearly 9 in 10 (89 percent) of Canadian employers say excessive workload is a problem.

Ignoring employee mental health could end up hurting employers’ bottom line.

“Over the past few years we’ve seen employers asking employees to work longer hours and to do more with less, leaving less time for healthy activities like going to the gym or eating properly,” said Keri Alletson, senior consultant and a member of the Towers Watson research team. “At the same time, people are worrying about job security and their personal wellbeing. Together, these factors can add up and take a serious toll on both physical and mental health, as well as increase absence from work and presenteeism. In addition to the individual consequence, the business consequences — higher health care costs, reduced work performance and lost productivity — can be significant.”

Employees want help

Employees say they want their employers’ help in getting healthy.

Half of participants (50 percent) in the Aon Hewitt survey say they want a personalized plan that recommends specific actions they can take to improve their health. Workers are also looking for convenient, one-stop access to information, such as a company health website offering personalized tips. Workers would also like help from their employers in estimating health care and health insurance costswith the use of a cost-estimating calculator or other tools or advice that can be customized to each worker’s situation.

“If companies truly want to move the needle in terms of overall health and cost, they have to stop looking at employees as one group, and start looking at the individual,” said Joann Hall Swenson, principal and health engagement best practice leader at Aon Hewitt. “Employers can customize health information and related programs to address the specific health conditions and risks of their workers as well as offer specific tips and actionable steps they can take to improve their condition. In addition, offering tools that allow individuals to see and understand the cost of their health care services goes a long way in helping workers make the most of their health care dollars.”

According to consumers, the best way to motivate them to participate in employer-sponsored health plans is by using rewards. More than half of consumers would prefer either non-cash or cash incentives to encourage them to take part in wellness plans (60 percent), condition management programs(50 percent) or to respond to  health risk questionnaires (58 percent).

The Towers Watson survey found that the companies that are most successful at encouraging employee wellness, invest more in health and productivity than organizations with less-effective programs. They also focus not just on physical health prevention, but build programs that address both health care and workplace conditions, the survey found.

According to the survey, employers with effective health and productivity programs are doing much more to link senior leaders to program performance, engage employees in the management of their health with incentives, measure program outcomes, target preventable causes of employee absence and personalize communications for specific employee populations.

“The evidence overwhelmingly shows that effective health and productivity programs can make a real difference to an organization’s bottom line,” Poirier said. “There are unrelenting pressures on employers and employees today, but improving employee health is an opportunity for a true win-win.”

For diabetics, there is no comfortable way to accurately measure blood sugar that does not involve blood. Testing takes a little pinprick, but some people who should test many times a day don’t because of the pain.

Engineers and doctors across the world have worked for years to find a painless way, and now a new study adds another drop of confidence to the idea of testing tears instead of blood.

A sensor developed by researchers at the University of Michigan detected dilute levels of sugar, or glucose, in tears, according to the study published yesterday (Nov. 9) in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

In a test of 12 rabbits, researchers showed that glucose levels in tears correlated to glucose levels in the blood, upping the competition to find a bloodless test for diabetics.

Clinicians say there is great demand for an alternative to finger-prick tests. The AmericanDiabetes Association estimates 25.8 million people in the United States have diabetes, though of those, 7 million are undiagnosed.

“This is an incredibly hot area,” said Dr. George Grunberger, who serves on the board of the American Association of
Clinical Endocrinologists. “People have been trying to read glucose through skin, through measurements attached on the earlobe. There have been machines on the market that got taken off the market because of unreliability and poor reproducibility.”

People with diabetes have too much glucose in their blood, whether because their pancreas stopped making the hormone insulin that regulates blood sugar, or because the cells in their bodies became resistant to insulin, and therefore are unable to uptake sugar from the bloodstream.

Depending on the patient, a person with diabetes may need to check his or her blood sugar often. “Two, three, four or even 10 measurements a day. It’s because blood sugar can change so muchduring the day,” Grunberger said.

The researchers at University of Michigan aren’t the first to try an alternative by testing tears for glucose levels in the body.

Jeffrey LaBelle, a biomedical engineer at Arizona State University, has teamed with researchers at the Mayo Clinic to develop tear glucose monitoring technology. Their aim is to create a sensor you touch to the white of your eye for five seconds, then press into a device for a reading.

Testing tears may have an advantage in comfort over testing blood. LaBelle said the idea to investigate using tears appeared as early as 1937, but the logistics in working with the fluid of tears has been difficult for engineers to overcome.

As the authors of the new study pointed out, “levels of glucose in tears have been found to be typically 30-50 times lower than in blood,” and that presents a challenge to engineers to come up with sensitive sensors that work with small amounts of fluid.

“The major challenges are evaporation, lower concentration in glucose in tears than blood, lower volume — there’s a lot more blood than tear fluid — and not stimulating the eye; not rubbing it,” LaBelle said. “Glucose is also a stress responder, so if you stress the eye you can get an inaccurate reading.”

LaBelle said the University of Michigan team is in the same stage of testing tear glucose sensors as his team, which is also using rabbits and making progress.

Modern blood glucose sensors require less blood than in decades past, but so far no alternative has completely removed the need for blood testing. And, Grunberger said, accurate glucose testing is the first and most important piece of information doctors need to treat diabetics.

“Everything we do, all the standard of care, is based on blood glucose levels,” said Grunberger, who is chairman of the Grunberger Diabetes Institute in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Even the continuous glucose monitoring systems implanted under the skin haven’t been approved by the FDA to replace blood tests, Grunberger added.

Tears may never completely replace blood tests either. Although tear glucose correlated to blood glucose in each animal in the University of Michigan study, there were different correlations between individual rabbits.

“The use of tears as an alternate sample to assess blood glucose in human subjects will likely require that the ratio of glucose in tears and blood be established first for a given individual,” the authors wrote. So if the technology is one day used in people, each person would have to calibrate their tear sensors to their blood glucose level.

However, Grunberger said the University of Michigan team seemed to show a good correlation between the tear glucose and blood glucose. Now they will just have to repeat the results with animals that are moving around during the day, in healthy people, and in diabetics, he said.

Shawty Lo is on the mend at an Atlanta-area medical facility after being hospitalized yesterday following an apparent diabetic episode.

In a statement released to RapFix, Lo’s manager, Johnnie Cabbell, confirmed that the 35-year-old rapper was admitted to the hospital to “seek immediate medical attention.”

“We appreciate the outpouring of concern and prayers. Shawty Lo was hospitalized yesterday,” Cabbell said. “He suffers from diabetes and had to seek immediate medical attention, although he is now resting and doing well…. He will be able to fulfill his scheduled upcoming performances and appearances.”

The “Dey Know” rapper, who signed to 50 Cent’s G-Unit Records earlier this year, has spoken in past interviews about his struggle living with diabetes.

“I’m diabetic. I’ve been diabetic for 11 years now, and first I was in denial when I first became a diabetic because I wanted to stay the same. But when you learn how to cope with it, you deal with it. I’m trying to teach people who have the disease that you can live with it.”

Shawty Lo is among the 25 million Americans that have diabetes. Other notable stars living with the disease include actor Anthony Anderson and Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes.