| Nov 04, 2010


Heather Adamson and her husband retired to Arden about four years ago, and they have settled in and enjoy village life after spending their working lives in Toronto.

While her husband has had heart problems in recent years, aside from arthritis and some of the aches and pains of ageing, Heather has enjoyed good health. A few months ago, Heather was feeling some tiredness, and she checked her blood sugar on a glucose monitor her husband has been using since he had heart surgery in 2007. She found that her levels were elevated.

So, she had some blood work done at the Sharbot Lake Family Health Team and found out that since she was last checked in 2008, she has developed Diabetes.

“It felt to me like a death sentence,” she said when interviewed at her home in Arden this week. “All I could think about were amputations, blindness and so on. I found out that there are things that can be done to manage Diabetes, but it takes a lot of work.”

Heather now has a soft cover case with charts, a number of general information books and cook books as well as a couple of log books. She tracks her glucose levels in one log book and marks down everything that she eats in the other book.

“It now takes me well over an hour to shop for food, because I have to read the labels in the store very carefully,” she said. “I have to eat lean meat, I have to watch out for potatoes, and I can't have cookies. There have been a lot of changes.”

Heather is also planning to go to dancercize classes that are held at the nearby Kennebec Hall twice a week, and although she was not particularly overweight, she has lost eight pounds since she was diagnosed and began to moderate her diet accordingly.

The staff at the Family Health Team have been encouraging, and tell her that she has kept her levels in a good range.

But the diagnosis is permanent.

“I asked the nurse about that. She said my levels were good, my condition seems to be manageable. But she said once I am a diabetic I will always be a diabetic. There is no cure.”

The condition that Heather Adamson has is known as Type 2 Diabetes, which usually occurs in adulthood. It occurs when cells throughout the body are unable to absorb insulin from the blood, or the insulin that is produced is not effective. Ninety percent of diabetics fall into this category. Type 1 Diabetes, which more commonly comes on in childhood, occurs when the organ that produces insulin, the pancreas, fails.

The incidence of Type 2 Diabetes has been on the rise in Canada for years, and in South Eastern Ontario there was a marked increase between 1996 and 2006. In the region, the population increased by 8% over that time frame, but the reported incidences of Diabetes jumped by 72%.

Part of the increase can be attributed to the ageing population in the region, and part to an increase in the number of people who are getting tested for the disease, but lifestyle factors such as increases in the rate of obesity and a more sedentary population are also cited as causal factors.

Jennifer Allen is a nutritionist working with Diabetes patients out of the Sharbot Lake Family Health Team. She took over the job early this past summer.

“Since I started working here in the summer I have taken an average of one new client each week. The numbers are growing and growing,” she said.

Patients like Heather Adamson, who treat their diagnosis as a challenge and are motivated to make the necessary changes in order to keep living a healthy life, make up a portion of her patients. Others require a more measured approach.

Jennifer Allan said that she develops an individual nutrition plan for each patient, based on their own lifestyle and family circumstances. “It is important to understand the lifestyle that people are leading, and their eating practices, so that small changes can be made over time to improve patient health,” she said.

Allan works with patients who are classed as pre-Diabetic, who are at risk of developing the condition, with the goal of keeping them from getting Diabetes. For her patients that have Diabetes, the goal is to maintain their health and keep some of the serious consequences from developing.

The potential health effects that Diabetes brings include: heart and blood vessel damage, kidney damage, nerve damage, blurred vision and more.

November is Diabetes month. In the coming weeks the Frontenac News will be looking at some of the services for Diabetes patients that are available in the region.

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