Diabetes ravages Native population

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      As a support worker for the Langley school district, Sheila Jack helps 90 children between the ages of 13 and 18 deal with educational and emotional challenges. By the time those kids are 40, more than one-third of them could have Type 2 diabetes, she told the Georgia Straight.

      That's because the children Jack works with are Native.

      According to the Canadian Diabetes Association, more than two million Canadians have diabetes, and by 2010 the disease will cost taxpayers an estimated $15.6 billion every year. Health Canada says Native Canadians are three to five times more likely than the general population to develop Type 2 diabetes. And a report published by the department in 2000 predicted that in Manitoba, where a major study was done, 27 percent of Native people will have diabetes by 2016.

      The Canadian Diabetes Association explains that Type 2 diabetes occurs when a person's body produces insulin but cannot use it properly. The result is a failure to change the sugar from food into energy.

      Jack, who is Métis and is herself a Type 2 diabetic, said that every one of her kids knows that she lives with diabetes. As much as she helps them, she also depends on them for inspiration to keep herself in good shape. "How can I expect them to eat properly and eat healthy if I don't set an example?" she said in a telephone interview.

      Jack was diagnosed with diabetes when she was in her mid 30s. She was experiencing fatigue, mood swings, dizzy spells, and blurred vision. The first question the doctor asked was if there was a history of diabetes in her family. There was, and a blood test confirmed suspicions that she had developed Type 2 diabetes. Jack was immediately put on medication.

      Over the next few years, other medical conditions led to complications with Jack's diabetes. Eventually, she had to undergo a series of surgeries, and for a long time found managing the disease very challenging.

      Today, Jack has lost a significant amount of weight and is off medication. But living with the disease still isn't easy. "I'm supposed to test myself seven times a day until I finish losing weight, but I can't afford that," she explained. "And if I'm not careful, I'll end up having a crash or I'll end up getting to the point where I'm on insulin or something”¦and I don't want to do that."

      Jack said that when her diabetes was at its worst, she was spending between $300 and $500 a month on testing strips and medicine. "That's half my mortgage.”¦But if I don't take care of my diabetes now, I'm going to have more complications later."

      Jay Wortman, a Métis physician with the First Nations and Inuit health branch of Health Canada, explained theories about higher diabetes rates in Native populations to the Straight.

      "The generally accepted idea is that there has been a change in lifestyle, and that means that people are eating a different diet and are not getting as much exercise as they used to get," he said. Traditional Native diets lacked significant amounts of carbohydrates, but now people are eating foods that are very high in starches and sugars. Their digestive systems have not had time to catch up.

      Exacerbating the situation are socioeconomic conditions, Wortman said. Native communities are often poorer than the general population. Because it costs less to eat at McDonald's than to buy organic foods, financial constraints on some Native families compound the problem.

      Despite the scale of the diabetes epidemic in Native populations, Wortman perseveres with his work. In the small, largely Native community of Alert Bay, just off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island, he is working with Clayton Hamm, a physician at the 'Namgis Health Centre. The two have found cause for excitement.


      Dr. Jay Wortman in Alert Bay with Eva Dick, a community health representative, preparing a potluck dinner for members of a diabetes study.

      In August 2006, Wortman and Hamm set out to connect the dots between dietary changes in Native populations and increasing diabetes rates. Forty members of Alert Bay's Native community were put on a "modernized form" of a traditional Native diet. For seven-and-a-half months, participants were monitored for changes in health conditions related to diabetes.

      "And they lost weight, they improved their cholesterols, they improved their blood-sugar control, and they felt better," Wortman said. "And not only that, but they got off of their medications."

      In January, Wortman and Hamm will finish gathering data. If interim analyses are any indication, Wortman said, the study's results will be cause for optimism. In the first half of 2008, CBC will air a documentary on the two doctors' work in Alert Bay that will follow the experiment from the beginning.

      Speaking from the island community's clinic, Hamm began an interview on a sombre note. He claimed that from Alert Bay's population of 1,500, he was seeing a new diabetic patient every second or third week. "That number may be exaggerated," he added, "because it just seems like that sometimes."

      But when discussing the work he was doing with Wortman, Hamm's tone changed completely, from despair to hope.

      "It generated an interest in the community," he said, "because a lot of people who weren't necessarily on the study joined in [the diet] just because they had heard about it and were interested in it. So it had a ripple effect."

      Pattie Rosvold, a colleague of Jack's who runs diabetes programs out of the North Fraser Métis Association in Burnaby, highlighted the urgent need for members of Canada's Native communities to act.

      "This used to be an old person's disease," she said. "And instead of dropping by years”¦it's hitting 10- and 12-year-olds; it's dropping generations." Rosvold argued that the shift was "directly linked" to changes in diet and the adoption of more sedentary lifestyles.

      Rosvold does not have diabetes but said that because she is Métis, the disease is always on her mind. "It's like you're driving along the highway and you see lights at the intersection, and those orange ones blinking are the ones that are telling me I'd better smarten up."

      For eight years, Jack has fought a battle with a disease that she knows pending a cure she will have for the rest of her life. With her work in the Langley school district, she hopes it is a fight that she can make easier for the children of her community.

      "I am truly blessed with my job," she said. "It's the best job I've ever had."

      Comments

      2 Comments

      Danny David

      Jun 3, 2010 at 7:37am

      my self is a type 2 diabetic and i have troubles handling it because yesterday i had a serious symptoms which includes sick feeling,stomach cramps,head ache,weakness and the shakes. I was scared for my life and i told my self that i was going to change my diet and stay active but i went back to my ways of eating junk food. if only i could have some kind of motive when i worked out at the gym because when i see the fit people working out at the gym i used to goto i would think "what am I doing here? I don't belong here, im a fat loser, I even look grosse in the mirrors there have at the gym. so if you guys can support any help i am glad to accept any kind of help.

      danial davidson

      Apr 17, 2011 at 2:35pm

      Everyone starts somewhere, just find the courage to keep your head high. Who cares what others thinks its what you feal. Thats the best advice I can give. Trust me I was like you once, but I just told myself forget what they think, and now people wish they had a body like mine.