The Challenge of Diabetes

As the waters released by Hurricane Katrina enveloped Joyce Taylor's home, she and husband Leroy were already on the road to Baton Rouge.  New Orleans natives, the Taylors knew when folks said a storm was coming, it was time to go.  "We live between a lake and a river in East New Orleans--almost like a little island," Joyce explains.  "Our area was the first to be hit."       

Like so many of her neighbors, family members and friends, the storm was just the beginning of years of displacement and loss for Joyce. Still, as she packed her bags and considered the struggle ahead, she knew there was one thing she absolutely had to do--control her diabetes no matter what else happened. "I was going through one catastrophe, I didn't want another crisis caused by diabetes," says Taylor, who left home with a month's worth of diabetes medication and her blood sugar monitor in her bag.  

While living day to day in a Baton Rouge hotel, she got creative.   "I'd take the stairs at the hotel and walk up and down the block [to maintain most of the 100- pound weight loss from a few years earlier].  I had to eat in restaurants, so IE2d order baked and broiled chicken and lots of vegetables, and I stayed away from my weakness--soda and sweets."  

Taylor also met stress with prayer. "Our faith gave us strength," says Taylor, 55, a retired teacher whose husband is a minister.   

It would be more than two years before she could move back home, and while her mom and daughter survived the storm, both of them passed away before the ordeal was over, leaving Taylor a full-time mom to her 4-year-old grandson. 

Yet through it all, she kept the diabetes under control. "You see people lose limbs," Taylor says. "Things like that motivate you to take care of yourself." Back home since last December, and with her blood sugar down to a healthy 118 and her weight in check, she's finally ready for a happier chapter of her life. 

Diabetes and Black Women 

Millions of African-American women are not as fortunate as Taylor when it comes to handling diabetes.  While diabetes is increasing in every American population, the number of cases among African-American women rose 69 percent between 1989 and 2005--the highest rate among any group in this country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  Millions of black women older than 20 also have the disease, yet one-third has yet to be diagnosed, the American Diabetes Association reports. Am ong older black women, one in four older than 55 have the disease.  

Left unmanaged, diabetes will ruin your health and eventually take your life. "Diabetes is the No. 1 cause of adult blindness, kidney failure and lower limb amputation," says Ann Albright, Ph.D., director of Diabetes Translation at the CDC. "And it is a huge contributor to heart disease."  It is also the fourth leading cause of death for African-American women.

This situation has become so serious, experts say, because many of us just do not realize that in many cases, diabetes can be prevented. And even if you have the disease, it does not have to threaten your life. 

Sugar and Your Health

Beating diabetes means understanding it. The disease develops when your body is unable to properly use the sugar we take in every day when we eat carbohydrates. Once you eat a carbohydrate--bread, for example--it becomes sugar (glucose) that travels through your bloodstream and enters the cells of your body to be used as energy. "To get into your cells, sugar needs the help of a hormone called insulin," Albright says. Insulin is made in a gland called the pancreas.  

Without enough insulin, the sugar builds up in your blood and damages your blood vessels by making them thick and inflexible, cutting off the blood supply to your heart, kidneys, eyes and other organs.20Nerves can be damaged as well, causing numbness and other problems. 

In type I diabetes--an autoimmune disease most often diagnosed in children--the immune system attacks the pancreas and stops insulin production. Type I is inherited. In type II diabetes--the type most common in African-American women--the pancreas makes some insulin, but not enough and cells are insulin resistant.  

Stop Diabetes Before It Starts

Every African-American woman should know type II diabetes is preventable in many cases. "The most important thing for anyone to know is that [excess] weight creates insulin resistance," says Larry Deeb, M.D., immediate past president of medicine and science for the American Diabetes Association. 

In addition to being overweight (especially abdominal fat), if you have a parent or sibling with diabetes or develop it during pregnancy (gestational diabetes), you're at risk. "That risk also increases as you age, so prevention is a progressive process that you should begin as early as possible," Albright adds.       

"If you have diabetes in your family, you don't have to get it and we can help," says Michelle Owens, head of the Women and Diabetes Initiative at the CDC.  "Through our program, The Power to Prevent, we give people the tools they need to reduce their risk."  For free materials you can use at home, log=2 0onto www.yourdiabetesinfo.org or call (800) 860-8747.

Living Well With Diabetes

The best news about diabetes is that there's tons of great advice and new research about the best way to eat, the benefits of exercise and the proper way to use medications. And free information and support groups can be found just about anywhere in the country.  Staying healthy with diabetes is a challenge, but it's definitely one you can meet.  "I've lived with type 1 diabetes for 41 years," Albright says. "There are many things you can do to live a long and healthy life."    

Sheree Crute is a Heart & Soul contributing editor.

For more living with diabetes information, visit http://diabetes.palmbeachpost.com.