Teaching about Healthy Snacking at Middle Schools

Last month, some pharmacy students partnered up with 'The Challenge Program' and helped out at the Green Street Academy Health Fair to teach the students about healthy snacking.

 

We made delicious fruit and yogurt parfaits and trail mix. We also showed students how to read a nutrition label. It is healthier to limit the amount of fat and sodium. If you have diabetes you want to monitor the amount of carbohydrates in each meal. Check the fiber and vitamins section of the label to see if the item is healthy for you.To maintain a healthy diet it is a good idea to look at the nutrition label of all the foods you eat. Below is an image from the National Kidney Foundation providing more information about nutrition labels.

Cici Takes on Diabetes- a diabetes educational video

Check out this video that Operation Diabetes put together this year!  

MOD does blood pressure screenings

MOD conducted blood pressure screenings at Professional Pharmacy and at a local health fair as part of the Million Hearts Initiative. The initiative is to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes by 2017.

It is especially important for people with diabetes to control their blood pressure.

 

 

Below you can see a section of the fact sheet from the million hearts website. It explains what the blood pressure numbers mean. People can reduce their blood pressure by eating less salt. Try to eat no more than 1500mg of sodium a day. That is less than 1 teaspoon of salt! Most people with high blood pressure need 2 or 3 medicines to lower it. Work with your pharmacist and doctor to find the medications that are best for you. 

 

MOD goes to the UMB Wellness Fair

MOD went to the wellness fair to educate University of Maryland staff, students, and the community about diabetes. We talked to 62 people and conducted the diabetes risk assessment. We also provided hand-outs on how to prevent type 2 diabetes and about blood glucose.

Below you can see clips from the handout we gave up on how to delay type 2 diabetes. The handouts came from the American Diabetes Association website. http://www.diabetes.org/

Script Your Future

Operation Diabetes Participated in a Script Your Future event at Safeway to encourage medication adherence.

Above you can see a picture of the wallet cards that we handed out. It reminds patients of their pledge to take their medications and contains a list of the medications that they are taking. It is important to carry your medication list with you at all times so you can discuss them with your pharmacist and physicians. We handed out 246 wallet cards encouraging medication adherence.





We asked the people who stopped by our booth to write on a post-it note what they are pledging for. For example, one person wrote that they are taking their medications because they want to be healthy for retirement. Another person pledged that they will take their medications to be healthy to see their grandchildren graduate high school. Pledging to take medications for a specific reason reminds patients of the importance of taking medication to stay healthy.

Healthy Cook Off

This month, Operation Diabetes Helped Organize a Healthy Cook Off for Million Hearts Week.



We had 4 cooks compete. The meals were judged on their salt and cholesterol content and their overall taste.

Dr. Rocafort and Dr. Fusco were the Cook Off Judges. They enjoyed all of the meals and had trouble making their final decision. The winner made a dish with Earl Grey flavored fish. We learned how tastey healthy food can be! Below you can see a photograph of the judges and the contestants.

Sleep Deprivation Could Increase The Risk for Type 2 Diabetes

I read an interesting article recently relating sleep to Diabetes.

We have been taught that sleep is important for our brain function, but it turns out that sleep is also important for our fat cells. When you feel groggy, your metabolism also feels 'groggy' and this can lead to insulin resistance.

A recent study published October 16th, 2012 in Annals of Internal Medicine conducted by the University of Chicago Medical Center professors indicated that a lack of sleep could also lead to obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure. This is the first study involving sleep on a cellular level. It was a very small study with only 7 healthy young adults. They were randomly assigned to sleep either 8.5 or 4.5 hours a night for four nights and repeated these sessions in four week intervals. After the four days, scientists measured how fat samples from their abdomen processed glucose. The people who were sleep deprived had a 30% reduction in their response to insulin. Their insulin levels were close to 3 times higher than the well rested participants. The high insulin levels suggest that the pancreas was trying to compensate for the insulin resistance by making more insulin. If this sleep deprivation cycle continued chronically, type 2 diabetes could develop. The next project for these researchers will involve studying if treating sleep apnea in overweight people will improve their metabolism.

Sleep may be another important lifestyle modification that we will have to tell our patients about in the future. However; since this was such a small study we will have to wait and see if it will be verified by other studies. One researcher claimed that sleep should be considered as important as diet when you are trying to prevent weight gain and diabetes.

I summarized the information from this website:

http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=669619