WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS: Diabetes and Obesity Matters

“A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.” 

                                                                    ---Spanish proverb

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in ten Americans has diabetes (30.3 million, or 9.4%).  Another 33.9% of U.S. adults aged 18 and older had prediabetes in 2015.  Diabetes is where there is too much sugar in the blood.  

One of the leading risk factors for diabetes is obesity and overweight. Other risk factors are: smoking, high blood pressure, physical inactivity, high cholesterol, and high blood sugars.  Diabetes and obesity are intricately linked and both can be reversed and prevented.  To tackle the childhood obesity epidemic, we must look at the diabetes crisis.  

Most Americans with diabetes have type 2, or adult onset (90-95%).  The remaining 5-10% have type 1, formerly called juvenile diabetes, where the pancreas makes no insulin and the individual is insulin-dependent.  Gestational diabetes occurs when a female is pregnant and develops diabetes during pregnancy; having gestational diabetes increases the girl or woman’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes sometime later in her life.  Many kids who are overweight or obese are at high risk for developing type 2 diabetes and other obesity-related diseases such as sleep apnea and bone and joint disorders. It is misleading to call the most common type of diabetes "adult onset" when so many teens are now at risk for developing it due to what that they eat and their physical inactivity.  

Diabetes is preventable.  Yet 7.2 million Americans are undiagnosed (23.8% of people with diabetes).   In round numbers, 1 in 4 Americans with diabetes doesn't know they have it.     

In working with kids who are overweight, I have learned that kids want to be taught how to eat well so they don't get sick.  They didn’t ask for the burden and bullying from carrying an extra 40 or 50 pounds as a result of being fed highly processed foods and having easy access to cheap, sugary drinks. 

Do you have a family member with diabetes?  You can help by starting with small, easy changes.  Begin to look at everything your family consumes that is sweet.  One of the easiest things to do is to eat fresh fruit instead of fruit juice.  Replace sodas and diet sodas with water.  Make most of the sugar you eat NATURAL SUGAR not ADDED SUGAR, such as the high fructose corn syrup found in sodas and fruit juices, even foods we give little thought to such as ketchup.  Added sugars have no nutritional value, they are just empty calories.  Teach your kids the difference. 

Replace that morning donut with a slice of toasted whole grain bread (I like Dave’s Killer Bread, the one in the green package) with some almond butter and sliced organic bananas.   If you do nothing more than start reading all the food labels before throwing things in your grocery cart, look for “high fructose corn syrup” on the ingredients list of the package. Make the very smart decision not to buy or consume ANYTHING that contains high fructose corn syrup. 

Small steps, simple changes, big results.

With love,

Nancy Heinrich, MPH

Founder and Wellness Architect

Growing Healthy Kids, Inc.

Photo credit:  Ella Chabot

WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS: It's a New Year

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."  

                                                          --Nelson Mandela

We made it to Twenty Twenty.  While there is so much good to celebrate in the world, there  are so many reasons for concern and worry.  The quality of our children's health and lives is at stake.

This year is an especially critical year for Mother Earth.  We are at a critical turning point in what happens to our future.  We need the dignity, leadership, and passion of women - and men - to lead the planet away from the cliff of climate change. 

No apologies for starting the first 2020 Wellness Wednesdays article on a serious note.  In my humble opinion, New Year’s resolutions should be laser focused on what each of us can do to reduce our carbon footprint and to teach our children about the interconnectedness of how the burning of fossil fuels is affecting migration patterns of birds, rising water and air temperatures, rising sea levels, increased flooding, fires, and hurricanes, the impact of rising temperatures on food production, human migration, health issues, and the quality of life of every person on this planet we call home.

We have reached a point where the health and lives of America’s children will be dramatically different than what their parents imagined for them.  Unless we can take dramatic steps to dare to become educated, to change what must be changed, to care about the future. 

Growing Healthy Kids will work this year to educate children and parents about healthy eating and reversing and preventing childhood obesity.  We will educate children and parents about taking care of our planet by taking care of our local communities by eliminating the use of single use bottles, recycling, and reducing our impact.  What you can do as parents is educate yourselves about what you and your children can do to reduce your use of fossil fuel.  Start this year by making the resolution to plant trees where you live.  

The planet will survive.  The question is, will we? 

With love,

Nancy Heinrich, MPH

Founder and Wellness Architect

Growing Healthy Kids, Inc.

Dedicated to improving the health - and lives - of America's children

WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS: Mother Earth is in the Emergency Room

"I have a dream that the powerful take the climate crisis seriously.  The time for their fairytales is over."

                                                                      -- Greta Thunberg

When Swedish teen and climate advocate Greta Thunberg landed on the shores of the U.S. on a zero emissions boat this month, she brought her voice and passion about the critical need for dramatic actions to solve the climate change crisis.  Rising atmospheric temperatures, melting glaciers and Arctic ice, rising sea levels, stronger hurricanes, more frequent floods and forest fires call for immediate change to business as usual.

Teaching kids to protect the planet by reducing, reusing, and recycling is a message that needs to continue.  But it is not enough.  Our planet needs healing from the damage caused by for profit companies that are exploiting our growing dependence on fossil fuels like coal and petroleum.

Carbon is being dumped into the atmosphere and it is killing people and changing our climate faster than we can adapt.  Land is being clear cut in the Amazon to make way for cattle production at a time when we need more trees, not less.  Food production is being affected, national security is affected, and migration of birds is affected. The planet is heating up and the planet is on fire.

As a lifelong member of the Sierra Club, spending time outdoors and protecting our water, air, and land are strong values of mine.  As a Florida coastal resident, I stand witness to worsening hurricanes and hotter summers.

Begin talking with your kids about climate change in ways they can understand and identify things you can do at home, at work, and in your community to embrace the concept of reducing carbon emissions and zero fossil fuels by 2030.  Next time you need a light bulb, buy LED.  Turn off lights when you leave a room.  Eat less meat.  Start advocating and saving for an electric car.  Support solar and wind energy.  

We can – and must – act to save Mother Earth.  This planet is the only home we have.  Our children are counting on us.  Their health and lives depend on how soon we act to reverse the climate change crisis. 

With gratitude,

Nancy Heinrich

Founder, Growing Healthy Kids