An article on www.msnbc.com  by Rita Rubin today caught my attention: “Diabetes Shame Plus Denial a Risky Combo”. 

Many people I’ve worked with in the past seven years didn’t have a support system of family and friends.  As a result, they had wildly uncontrolled diabetes.  Uncontrolled diabetes is how you get the complications like neuropathy (when your hands and/or feet get all tingly or go numb), heart attacks, and vision problems.  When diabetes is controlled, you don’t have complications. 

Denial about having diabetes is too common, unfortunately, because it leads to a delay in a plan of action about becoming educated and preventing life-threatening complications.  Feeling shame because you’ve been told you have diabetes is a negatively powerful tool to ensure that you’ll have problems.   The article I read talked about how one woman’s dialog with her mother about choices she had made as a child (“I told you not to eat all those sweets”) took her down a path that had poor results. 

Let’s talk about diabetes.  Do not feel shame.  Feel empowered that you can now make good choices.  Feel good that you can now teach your family to be informed and stay healthy.  We all need a support system.  Hiding something like a diabetes diagnosis will only delay your success in controlling diabetes and hopefully, with my help, reversing it. 

To read the entire article, go to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45137643/ns/health-diabetes/.

Your health IS your life.  Make it great!  We don’t have time for denial or shame.   So let’s get started, TOGETHER!

Nancy L. Heinrich, M.P.H.

Author of Healthy Living with Diabetes: One Small Step at a Time (www.ourlittlebooks.com) and Healthy Diabetes Coach: Your Keys to Control (www.healthydiabetescoach.com) , a diabetes education program for people newly diagnosed with diabetes or prediabetes

Tags: controlling diabetes, exercise and diabetes, Healthy Diabetes Coach, Healthy Living with Diabetes, Nancy Heinrich, obesity and diabetes, Our Little Books, preventing diabetes, Rita Rubin

Today I met someone who said her doctor told her to never eat pasta again.   She said her daily blood sugars have been going up for the past several months.    

I quietly talked with her for just 5 minutes.  About stress (she’s got plenty).  About pasta (she wants it).  About walking (she doesn’t do it).  About excuses (she has some).  About good carbohydrates (she wasn’t clear about what these are). 

Let me be very clear.  If you have diabetes, it is the total amount of carbs you eat that matters.  If you eat more carbohydrate foods than you can handle, your blood sugar will rise.  Make most of your carbs the good ones (like whole grain pasta, veggies, and lentils) and limit the bad ones (like sugar, white flour, and fruit juice). 

Eat pasta.  Just make it the whole grain kind that meets “The Nancy Rule”.  Eat well.  Live well.  Reverse diabetes with healthy eating and regular physical activity. 

So, Debbie, I’m so glad we met today.   See you soon! 

Nancy

PS–I created “The Nancy Rule” because it makes it easy to know what to buy.  Start using ”The Nancy Rule”:  buy only breads and pastas with 4 or more grams of dietary fiber per serving AND the first ingredient includes the word “WHOLE”.   Lots more tips to control, reverse, and prevent diabetes are in my book, “Healthy Living with Diabetes: One Small Step at a Time” available at www.ourlittlebooks.com.

Tags: carbohydrates and diabetes, diabetes and food, Nancy Heinrich, preventing diabetes complications, stress and diabetes, uncontrolled diabetes, www.ourlittlebooks.com

While working yesterday at the Growing Healthy Kids Variety Store in Vero Beach, two women came in to shop.  After a few minutes, one of them asked if she could sit down.  I said, “Sure”.  She said one of her feet was hurting.  I told her to put her foot up on a chair if that would help.  She declined and quietly waited for her friend who was still shopping.

I said nothing.  She remained sitting.  I asked if she checks her feet often.  She said she does because  she has diabetes.   That’s when our conversation began.

I said that the Growing Healthy Kids project is all about preventing diabetes by creating solutions for children and parents who are overweight and obese. 

She said she needed to lose weight.  We started talking.  I asked her about her last A1C blood test.  She had it done in the past month.  I asked if the result was below 7 or not.  It wasn’t.  Not good.

I then asked what the result of her previous A1C was.  It was lower that her last one.  I spoke with her about what that means in terms of complications from diabetes, such as peripheral neuropathy.  She said she is seeing a dietitian at the hospital.  Yet, from what this woman was saying, it was clear she was not sure how to control her daily blood sugars. 

Here’s the bottom line:  She has had foot pain for the past 4 months.  It hurts to walk.  Her A1C is elevated and rising.  She has a podiatrist on her health care team but hasn’t seen him recently.  I asked if she would call him on Monday morning and make an appointment to be seen as soon as possible.  She said yes.   

Her friend came around the corner and said, “Oh, there you are!”  The woman told her friend we’d been talking about diabetes.   We introduced ourselves to each other and she asked me to give her a “shout out”. 

Harriet, prevention is the key.  The longer you wait, thinking “it will get better by itself”, the worse the complications may be.  In the case of peripheral neuropathy, the complications are often not reversible. 

Diabetes is simply where there is too much sugar in the blood.  High sugar levels clog up and slow down your blood’s circulation throughout your body.  That’s not good.  

Diabetes is controllable, preventable, and reversible.   Learn everything you can so you know what to do.  Ask for help.  We only get one turn on this merry-go-round so let’s make it a great ride!

Harriet, here’s my shout-out to you:  “Call Dr. R  tomorrow.  No more postponing!”  

Nancy Heinrich

Your Diabetes Health Coach

Vero Beach, Florida

Tags: amputations, diabetes coaches, diabetes education, Growing Healthy Kids, Growing Healthy Kids Variety Store, Healthy Diabetes Coach, Healthy Living with Diabetes: One Small Step at a Time, Nancy Heinrich, ourlittlebooks, peripheral neuropathy, podiatrists, preventing amputations, preventing diabetes complications

What do diabetes and Amputees Across America have in common?  Jeff Martin. 

 Jeff is one of five men who completed a 60 day, 3,500 mile bicycle ride across America last Friday when they pulled into the parking lot at HealthSouth Treasure Coast Rehabilitation Hospital on 37^th Street in Vero Beach, Florida.  Before the article in last week’s Vero Beach Press Journal about this organization ending its annual ride in my home town, I had never heard of Amputees Across America.  However, 2011 is  the tenth annual trip for Amputees Across America where they reach out to recent amputees through their partnership with HealthSouth.  With the motto of “Dream it, Believe it, Achieve it,” these five men have achieved a huge milestone for themselves.  They have also inspired others at the 19 HealthSouth Hospitals across the country to reach for your dreams, despite unplanned obstacles. 

 Jeff Martin, 52 years old, is from Savannah, Missouri.  On April 14, 2010 he lost his left leg to an infection after complications from diabetes.  Congratulations, Jeff, for biking across America.   You are a hero.  Every person today who has diabetes or prediabetes needs to know who you are and what you have gone through so you can continue to inspire others to take control of their lives. 

Diabetes is the leading cause of lower leg amputations.  In my work as a diabetes educator, I teach people with diabetes how to “self-manage” to prevent complications such as amputations, heart attacks, and blindness.  The importance of daily foot checks is something many people overlook or skip, men especially.  I’ll never forget the nurse practitioner I used to work with at Florida Department of Health whose husband had uncontrolled diabetes and never did any foot checks on his own.  She assumed he was taking care of his feet and found out he wasn’t when he had developed severe infections.  If you have diabetes, do whatever it takes to keep your daily blood sugars and your A1C as close to normal as possible.  If you are a woman who lives with a man with diabetes, learn about diabetes.   To learn more about diabetes and foot care, go to http://ndep.nih.gov/media/feet_kit_eng.pdf.

Take a few minutes and read the bios of each of the five riders of this year’s ride, including Jeff Martin.  You will be inspired to reach for your dreams.  Go to: http://amputeesacrossamerica.com/aaa2011/index2011.htm.

Remember, diabetes is controllable, preventable, and reversible.  

Your Healthy Diabetes Coach,

Nancy Heinrich

Tags: Amputees Across America, diabetes complications, Healthy Diabetes Coach, Jeff Martin, Nancy Heinrich, National Diabetes Education Program, preventing diabetes, preventing diabetes complications

Have you ever had a day when you just wanted to stay in bed, block out the world, and not have to deal with everything and everyone? 

In my opinion it’s perfectly normal to have an occasional day like that as a protective self-defense and self-care strategy.  If you feel like that most of the time or all the time, that’s not normal. Depression is a diagnosis that is way too common in people with diabetes.  Why? 

When the sugar levels in your blood build up, it makes everything slow down.  High blood sugar levels also make it harder to do the right things to get your blood sugars back into balance – permanently.  If you feel down, it’s easier to just say, “to heck with it” and start eating everything in sight. 

Depression and diabetes are things that don’t get talked about a lot.  Depression just isn’t a sexy topic, I guess.  I read a lot of articles and research about what scientists are doing to solve the diabetes puzzle.  An article I read last year about the work of Hillary Bogner, MD, at University of Pennsylvania caught my eye and has remained in my active reading pile because it keeps reminding me of the simple strategies that can lead to really big results.  Dr. Bogner studies people with diabetes on medications with and without the support of one-on-one counseling sessions.  Guess what?  When people had someone they could turn to, they had better outcomes.  A 2007 study showed that treating depression in older diabetes patients “reduced the likelihood of death by half in the five years that followed,”  according to a June 2010 article in Diabetes Forecast by Andrew Curry.

You would think that it is a “no-brainer” that having a support system would ensure better outcomes for someone with diabetes who also has depression that requires pharmacological treatment.  But  it’s not because our U.S. health care system operates around treatment, not prevention.  Most doctors wait until there is a diagnosis instead of working with the whole person and being mindful to treat the whole person’s health instead of waiting until something goes wrong that we can treat with a drug. 

Dr. Bogner’s research is already producing powerful lessons for doctors, nurses, diabetes educators, and mental health professionals.  For me, the lesson is that we can all be better when we have a support system around us.  

For more information go to www.diabetes.org.

Tags: Depression, diabetes, Diabetes Forecast, diabetes prevention, diabetes research, Hillary Bogner, MD, Nancy Heinrich, University of Pennsylvania