Health News in Brief

Exercise Can Help Control Diabetes

For an estimated 135 million people worldwide living with diabetes, 15 to 30 minutes of daily exercise offers not only the common advantages of stress relief and better weight control, but it also helps delay serious health complications. Without making life altering changes, adding moderate exercise to your daily routine can be a great way to reduce your risks of serious health complications and maintain control of your disease. While those with diabetes experience the same benefits from exercise as everyone else, it plays a more significant role for people with diabetes because of their increased risk of heart disease, the leading killer of people with diabetes. Cutting risk factors with exercise can help reduce your risks for cardiovascular disease.

When planning an exercise program it is very important to take extra precautions based on your type of diabetes. For those with type 1 diabetes, it is a good idea to test your blood twice before exercising: once an hour before exercising and then 30 minutes before you begin your workout. This will give you a good indicator of whether your blood glucose level is stabilizing or dropping. According to the American Diabetes Association, for most people, the safe pre-workout blood glucose range is from 100 to 250 mg/dL. If your blood glucose level is below this range, have a snack before exercising. If it is between 100 to 150 mg/dL, be prepared to snack while exercising.

For those with type 2 diabetes, exercise increases cellular insulin sensitivity by taking glucose out of the blood to use for energy during and after exercise, this process then helps reduce the dose of insulin or oral medication needed. The American Diabetes Association recommends not to exercise with a blood glucose level over 200mg/dL. In most people with type 2 diabetes, high blood glucose levels do not represent insulin insufficiency, but instead insulin resistance. In this instance, exercise will help reduce this resistance, lower elevated glucose levels and improve the efficiency of insulin.

Before beginning an exercise program, visit your doctor for a complete physical. Work with your physician to plan an exercise program that meets your needs, and monitor your blood glucose level frequently while exercising.

Rez Robics Fitness Videos Target Native Couch Potatoes

DreamCatchers, a non-profit charitable organization founded by Kifaru Productions, has joined with Navajo Health Promotions, a division of the Indian Health Service on the Navajo Nation, to produce a two-video health and fitness set called Rez Robics and Rez Robics for Couch Potato Skins. The project is inspired by the fact that diabetes has become one of the most serious threats to the health of Indian people both on the reservations and in urban settings.

Since the best prevention of diabetes is a healthy diet and regular exercise, DreamCatchers and Navajo Health Promotions have produced a video set designed especially for Native Americans which includes aerobics as well as nutrition information. Rez Robics and Rez Robics for Couch Potato Skins features two prominent Native actor/comedians: Elaine Miles (Northern Exposure, Smoke Signals) and Drew LaCapa, the up and coming comedian who calls himself "300 pounds of love."

Rez Robics is an aerobics workout mixing pow-wow dancing and martial arts with normal aerobics moves while Rez Robics for Couch Potato Skins is a comedy in which Drew and Elane banter about why an Indian wouldn't want to exercise or eat healthy. This companion to the actual aerobics video is designed for Indians who normally would never watch an exercise program.

Copies of the videos are being distributed free of charge throughout the Indian communities of North America. Navajo Health Promotions distributes the videos on the Navajo Nation while DreamCatchers oversees distribution to the rest of Indian Country. To receive free copies, Indians living on or near the Navajo Nation should contact Navajo Health Promotions at (505) 368-6499.

Indians living outside the Navajo Nation should send a self-addressed stamped envelope or box large enough to fit two videotape cassettes or DVDs along with $5.00 in U. S. postage stamps to: DreamCatchers, 23852 PCH No.766, Malibu, CA. 90265, USA. If you're non-Indian and want a set of Rez Robics, we ask that you make a minimum $25 donation to DreamCatchers to assist with the free distribution to Indian communities. Include your donation with the self-addressed, stamped envelope.

The Rez Robics team is available to come to your community for Rez Robics diabetes prevention workshops for adults and children. For more information about the workshops contact Pam Belgarde at (209) 388-1548 or at: wellnative@hotmail.com

For more information about Rez Robics contact Gary Rhine at (310) 457-1617 or at: rhino@kifaru.com

Study Finds Native Patients At Risk Before And After Surgery

A study led by Dartmouth Medical School has concluded that American Indians and Alaska Natives have a greater chance of death within 30 days of surgery and suffer more from several preoperative risks compared to Caucasian patients.

Published in the June issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS), the Dartmouth Medical School-led study is the largest to explore surgical outcomes in the American Indian population. The study examined data on 4,419 male patients at Veterans Affairs hospitals across the country.

"As a nation, we want to deliver healthcare that is equal across all ethnic groups and races, but we're finding that some disparities exist," said lead author, Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord, assistant professor of surgery and of psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School.

Patients in the study were selected from the Veterans Affairs National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP), an ongoing government-funded program that provides risk-adjusted surgical morbidity and mortality data to measure the quality of care at VA hospitals. A total of 2,155 American Indians and Alaska Natives in the NSQIP database who had surgery between 1991 and 2002 were matched by facility to an equal number of randomly selected Caucasian patients. Alvord and colleagues found a significant difference in mortality rates after surgery, with 3.1 percent of American Indians dying compared to 2.2 percent of Caucasian patients.

The study also revealed higher rates of some preoperative risk factors among American Indians compared with Caucasians. These findings confirm previous reports that nearly twice as many older American Indians as Caucasians experience some type of functional impairment. The higher risk factors found in the study include wound infections, low platelet counts, and diabetes.

California Health Board Gets $17.1 Million For Substance Abuse

The U.S Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has awarded $17.1 million to the California Rural Indian Health Board as part of the President's Access to Recovery Program.

The California Rural Indian Health Board, or CRIHB, was the only tribal organization in the U.S. to receive such a grant. The money will provide treatment and recovery services for California's 88,000 American Indians and Alaskan Natives in need of treatment services for substance abuse.

"The California Rural Indian Health Board is honored to receive these funds," said CRIHB Executive Director James A. Crouch, M.P.H. "The money will allow our organization to play a vital role in improving access to health care services for American Indians and Alaskan Natives."

"This is the largest grant the California Rural Indian Health Board has received in its 35 years of supporting and improving services and access to tribal health care in California," said Michael D. Weahkee, M.B.A., M.H.S.A., Director of Family and Community Health. "Our clinical information systems make it clear that resources are desperately needed in this area."

The Access to Recovery Program will expand treatment options by providing people seeking drug and alcohol treatment with vouchers for a range of appropriate community-based services.

Abuse and Displacement Linked to Alcohol Issues Later in Life

New research on seven Native American tribes suggests that tribe members who were abused or sent away to school as children are more likely to have problems with alcohol later in life. Men were almost twice as likely to abuse alcohol if they had experienced a combination of physical and sexual abuse as children. Women were almost twice as likely to have alcohol problems if they had been sexually abused and attended boarding school.

The study, published in the September issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, is the first to look at adverse childhood environments as a risk factor for alcoholism across a large number of tribes, say Mary P. Koss, Ph.D., and Nicole Yuan, Ph.D., of the University of Arizona

Alcohol abuse exacts a terrible toll among several Native American communities, making it important to understand factors that might influence alcohol abuse among the population, according to the researchers. With the help of Native American interviewers and the cooperation of leaders of tribes in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Oregon, Maine and Arizona, the researchers collected information on adverse childhood experiences ranging from emotional neglect to physical abuse to adoption and boarding school attendance and drinking habits from 1,660 people. The participants were interviewed by a person from within their tribe or someone from another tribe, depending on tribal leaders' preferences.

Across all the tribes, 30 percent of the men and 18 percent of the women were diagnosed with some form of alcohol dependence. More than half said that they had at least one parent with alcohol problems. More than two-thirds of respondents reported at least one kind of adverse childhood experience. Physical neglect and abuse were among the most widely reported childhood experiences, while emotional neglect was the least prevalent.

The study was supported by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Olsen and Hollow Named Trailblazers By Science Spectrum

Baltimore, MD – Polly Olsen, Director of the UW Native American Center of Excellence, and Dr. Walt Hollow, Clinical Associate Professor of Family Medicine in the American Indian Studies program, have both been selected this year by the national publication Science Spectrum magazine for the Science Spectrum Trailblazers Top Minorities in Science awards. They will be featured in the magazine and recognized in September at the annual Minorities in Research Conference, the premier awards and professional development event for minority professionals in a broad range of scientific fields. The conference will be held in Baltimore.

The Science Spectrum Trailblazers award represents outstanding Hispanic, Asian American, Native American, and Black professionals in the science arena whose exemplary work on the job and in the community extends throughout and beyond their industry. Selected by Science Spectrum's editors, the chosen winners have all made a significant, quantifiable, personal impact on the industry, while making contributions that have uplifted their communities and maintaining a powerful position of influence regarding public policy for minorities in science.

"I am thrilled to present and honor the scientific field's brightest stars," says Dr. Tyrone D. Taborn, editor in chief of Science Spectrum magazine and CEO of Career Communications Group, Inc., producers of the conference and publishers of Science Spectrum. "Clearly, if we are to bring on a new cohort of science talent, we must begin by recognizing and applauding those in the multicultural communities who have excelled."

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