i am a registered dietitian and a certified diabetes educator and one of the things i do is i work for something called the rita coalition which is a nonprofit organization that partners with other people in the community to teach about diabetes to help reduce disparities related to diabetes because diabetes effects people of color more more so than any other groups and we also do so we teach about diabetes we do training we also do advocacy work and policy and systems work about changing people's access to healthy foods about where they can exercise teaching people how to advocate for themselves and so we do a lot of different things my role is with the diabetes mostly the curriculum and the with asian populations many who are well have been here for a long time so we're we're we know those kind of things this seem are works with the latino population exclusively and they work with both families have been here a long time and the new immigrants and and then there's another one of our other partners who's community center for multicultural health who and they work with the african american communities but are now expanding into working with east african communities and those types of diabetes a lot is the difference between the chill sure and there's a big difference and most people who have diabetes are going to have type two diabetes but type one diabetes is we used to call it juvenile diabetes but it usually occurs when somebody is very young and the pancreas that organ in our body that produces insulin that helps us use food in news in maintain our blood sugar levels it just fails it quits and it may be due to we're not even sure why entirely and there's so many unanswered things but when that happens we don't produce any insulin and that usually happens when you're little when type two diabetes occurs usually when you're in a dog and often when you're older though we're seeing it more and more news but that just means that something else is going on in our body no longer uses insulin like it should and so we still have high blood sugars we have all those things that happen with type one but it's a totally different cause and that one is related to a lot of different things right away and now there's a lot of misconceptions about diabetes you know some people think that only those people that over sixty are those people that a lot of sugar was at higher risk but that's not genetic there's a genetic component and we don't understand all of it we know that there's lots of different genes going on that put it at risk for diabetes but something turns out as genes are on and you don't have to be overweight though many people with type two diabetes are overweight but not all you don't have even the amount of sugar and nothing to do with it but it seems to be related to physical activity how much body fat we have not just our weight but maybe how much by that we have may i think it's an especially when i see a new immigrant populations i think stress is a huge issue because that puts a lot of stress on the body but it's a combination of genetics and the environments we live in maybe the types of food we eat that are not healthy but you can get diabetes and do everything right and you can still get diabetes consumption that people have about diabetes is that they take a prop and you know you see that are all the time especially on the internet cure diabetes reverse going to be here if you have diabetes you have it can you control it and make it and have your blood sugar is perfectly normal certainly and i know a lot of people do that whether they take insulin or they take other kind of medications but they control it and you can live like someone with your blood sugar is normal but once you have diabetes you have diabetes forever so if you took the medication you got to take it for ever exactly you've got to treat it and it's not always medication there's other things you have to be active you've got to eat healthfully you've got to take medications you need them control your stress all those things are important the way right now as in nutrition as i'm sure you have an well and it's hard for everybody to eat healthfully great i'm a dietician but i you know i have i struggle like everybody and maybe i know better how to do it but i struggle like everybody but after have to think of the last time i was at  restaurant which was excellent and we had a vegetarian meal just because i can't eat that we're not a vegetarian but it's good so we had and the only thing i think we i really did different than my friend who  me was a in a lot less danger and i ate one but i didn't have two or three and if i had diabetes if european food is perfectly healthy but when you have diabetes you have to control the amount of carbohydrate so  would you would eat less of the engineer or probably in order to reduce the carbohydrates but you can eat very healthily across any culture and i guarantee it but you do learn that portions are more important than what you eat at one time is more important virtually especially if you're making it at home it's made with it's healthy it's good for you but what happens when you have diabetes is that you have to control that portions break any as amazing how some people in our community  oh yeah but some people blame it for you know as one of the main sources of diabetes you know sounds like it is not the case i don't believe that i think what happens in if i look at how people develop take today vs and we look at the risk factors again i think it's the same for the immigrant community as well it's a change in lifestyle less activity maybe eating more calories maybe put on a little bit of weight not a law that may be too much body fat might be that but i think a lifestyle change look at a plate or you could almost look at a piece of engineer and you would say half of that should be green nonstarter colorful not just green orange red vegetables right half your plate should be that a quarter of your plate should be the meat or protein a lot but i think that's a good place to start i've seen other sort of instructions like half a piece of insurable want to tell people have a little and they're not very happy with that so i say start with one but make sure that rest of that plate is full of lots of good vegetables lean a one time thing or what was your purpose of that well what we do as part of the reach program is that we realize that we we can deliver information about diabetes as well as the people who live within those communities so what we do is we train what we call champions health champions or diabetes champions people who are interested in learning more about bts in want to talk to people in their community about it so what we did down of the ethiopian community center was train about nine people who completed two days four days of training and along to the company did it and what i gave them some basic information about diabetes they were able to see how i would teach classes and what topics we would do and then the the ideas that will go out and teach others in their community whether called small classes or large classes about what they learned and using our sort of curriculum now that's we did today training i did but that's not over because when  champions are ready to teach i'll go back and i will help our support i'll do more training if they need it and in fact in may at the health fair all right i'm going to join them at their table because they decided that's when they'll start talking to people about i came up as a trainee yeah people really talked about there's this sort of silence about the disease and if you ask me that's what happens in other communities and it's really something that needs to be addressed first because  diabetes doesn't if somebody in your family has diabetes everybody has diabetes you have to talk about it we have to recognise it we have to so that we're not afraid to treat it and to get help for it and so we can support each other  but some people still question the efficacy of prescribed medication for diabetes and they even prefer to use traditional medicine what is your opinion on that well what my main feeling is talk to your doctor about it don't hide it and to tell you there's a lot of traditional ways of doing things or foods certainly can actually help with they there are there are traditions captives that is eaten in the southwest of mexico it does seem to help lower blood sugars there are so i'm very interested in that kind of thing and so i don't tell people not to hide that what with in terms of diabetes you will need western medication more than likely at some point in your life with i b s so my best advice is tell your provider and if the doctor they go to the nurse to go to is unwilling to talk to about or find a different doctor but don't be be really honest about it because some medications could interfere with what you're doing and we want you to do books we want we want you to be healthy and you need you need to find a doctor who will listen who understands and or least tries to understand and work with you on those things how are a well how about the  test for our blood to test our blood sugar levels and how important is that and how often to people take it well and that's really important because it does the blood the sugar will stick to that  that molecule and what it can tell us is that it can give us sort of an estimated average of your blood sugars over the last two to three months so it should be done initially if someone just said no it's like every three months or so we could say hey how you doing and it's used for even for diagnosing now diabetes because it's a lot simpler and it can give you a range the only thing i would say is very important but for some people they need to check their blood sugars at home as well and so they have a day to day understand it onesies great and it should be done at least twice a year but it's not the whole story but it certainly is an important test for diabetes so what are things that are what are what are some important things for people with diabetes to do on a regular basis first of all i would say eat as healthfully as you can afford and that's an issue for people but we want to eat is fruits and vegetables whole not juice not all th nothing fancy fruits vegetables whole grains not as much protein perhaps or meat as merican sweet tons of meat you know don't adopt that try to keep that leads to healthy lean meats so a good balance of carbohydrates and all those kind of things plus getting active some way exercising joakim like you used to whatever it takes to do with your family by yourself with joining a gym and that's the kind of th you like to do that may not be culturally appropriate depends what people want to do but starting to be more active is one of the most important things and finding a way to manage stress reduce stress i really think those are the big three ok so what should we risk probably because they share the genetics and family history with those folks so if my a grandmother or my mother has diabetes the odds of me getting it are very high so i want to start preventing it now the other thing  really worrisome we're seeing is that because of the lack of activity in our youth and and in with white americans especially overweight we're seeing kids twelve thirteen fourteen getting type two diabetes which is a disease we always thought of older folks so we the you do need to be concerned if you have diabetes in your family then everybody's at risk and if there is diabetes in our family then we need to help each other in our communities because it's a devastating disease that it's not well controlled and so we really really need everybody to be aware thank you for being here for your time we have any other messages that you would like to say to our viewers well first of all thank you for doing this and i love talking about diabetes and i could go on and on and on and i and any other time you ever want me to come back and talk about this specially for the you you would love to but most of all i just as i've said before we have diabetes in the communities that means that all our communities have diabetes and if we're going to be healthy we need to work then i'm janet cap and i came to m m r t i to talk about diabetes two as part of the theo youth media programme and it was a great experience and i was able to tell people about little bit about basics about diabetes and how it impacts youth as well as entire communities and basically this it was a great experience this information is going to go out onto the web for everyone to see  and that is the great effective way to reach people around health communication so if you have the opportunity and to come in want to get your message out about health communication other important issues and you community this is a great place to start  help you produce a video there help you get your message out there and and i strongly encourage you to use their information in their resources w our decisions affect others around the world and here just from there israel language of economics and economics is probably one of the biggest ones for us here in america is generally speaking well belongs to them their story their family their right there are certainly legal issues that are to be considered as well and may agree with them but disagree if your search is against the law