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http://www.billingsgazette.com/region/20000216_reg04.html

DISEASE DISCUSSED
Diabetes prevalent with tribes
By PAT BELLINGHAUSEN
Of The Gazette Staff
02/16/2000

When about 200 people from Montana and Wyoming gathered for a discussion of
diabetes in Indian Country, they talked about problems that are close to
their hearts. Almost everyone in the conference room at the Billings
Sheraton Hotel either has diabetes, has a family member with diabetes or
works with diabetes as a health professional. Some can claim all three
connections to this chronic disease, which is incurable but treatable, and
often preventable.
"Devastating" was the word most frequently used to describe diabetes as a
panel representing reservation communities from Montana and Wyoming made a
presentation Tuesday at a health and wellness conference sponsored by the
Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council and the Montana-Wyoming Indian Health
Board. Nearly 250 people had registered for the conference, which continues
through Thursday morning at the Sheraton Hotel.

"This is a very devastating disease," said Alvin Windy Boy Sr. "Everyone in
this room is somehow affected by diabetes, whether it's family members,
parents or children."

Windy Boy urged his audience to advocate for diabetes care and research with
their tribal council members, their health board and their congressmen.

"Tell people who have the ability to change things what you don't have," he
said.

Diabetes is on the rise throughout the U.S. population, but it is more
prevalent among some Indian groups, including Montana and Wyoming tribes,
than in the general population. In some small Montana towns, the number of
people who are diabetic runs into the hundreds: 392 diabetics diagnosed on
the Rocky Boy Reservation, 450 on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, 1,030
at Browning.

More troubling is the fact that diabetes experts say that most diabetics
don't even know they are ill because they don't have their blood sugar
tested.

"For every diabetes diagnosis, there's three undiagnosed," said Kathy
Buffalo, who works in diabetes care and prevention at Lame Deer. Typically,
it takes three to four years for symptoms to develop to the point that an
individual will go to a doctor for a diabetes diagnosis, she said.

"Every week we have one or two more added to our list," Buffalo said. She
and some other speakers expressed frustration at policies that make diabetes
treatments more difficult to access.

"Why is it IHS (Indian Health Service) cannot provide the new medications.
Don't tell me it's too expensive," Buffalo said. "Dialysis is expensive.
Amputation is expensive. Blindness is expensive."

"Diabetes is an epidemic in Indian Country," Buffalo said. She urged the
group to talk to tribal councilmen and U.S. congressmen about diabetes.
"Insist on the help," she said.

Other speakers also were passionate about fighting diabetes. Myrtle Oldman,
an elder from the Wind River Reservation of Wyoming, talked about her
experience with diabetes. "Diabetes is a full body disease," she said,
listing symptoms ranging from extreme tooth pain to prickling in the feet
and a hand disorder.

"We need to educate our young children and our young parents," Oldman said,
citing "too much sugar in diets with pop and Kool-Aid" and too much TV
contributing to "couch potatoes."

Diabetes prevention projects in reservation communities are going into local
schools to screen for the disease. Dietitians are talking to youngsters
about eating healthier foods. Community health professionals and tribes are
organizing walking programs and fitness events to get people to be more
active, a key to preventing the disease as well as lessening the risk of
complications in people who already are diabetic. But it seems that whatever
efforts have been made, there is much more to be done.

Aleta Cole from Fort Belknap brought color photos of her 3-year-old grandson
to make her point about diabetes. Cole spoke as the mother and grandmother
of children diagnosed with Type I diabetes. Her son, now in his 20s, had to
travel to Billings to see a diabetes specialist. Her grandson, diagnosed at
18 months of age, must travel hundreds of miles to Poplar to see a doctor
for treatment of his diabetes.

"My family's been devastated by diabetes," Cole said.

Type I diabetes, also known as insulin-dependent diabetes or juvenile
diabetes, is relatively uncommon in Indian communities, according to Dr.
Kelly Moore, an IHS physician who introduced the Tuesday panelists.

Most Americans who have diabetes, including most Indians who have diabetes,
have Type II, which is a condition in which the body fails to respond
properly to the insulin needed to process sugars and other carbohydrates.
Type II diabetes used to be known as adult-onset diabetes, but health care
professionals are now finding it in youngsters.

The biggest proportion of people living with diabetes in the Browning
community are 40 to 60 years old, said Debbie Powell Taylor, a diabetes
nurse. But she and diabetes nurses from other communities reported that an
increasing number of diabetes cases are being diagnosed in young people.

"We are finding a lot more in the 20s. We do see children with Type II. We
had one 11-year-old and two 12-year-olds recently," Taylor said.

---
Pat Bellinghausen can be reached at (406) 657-1303, or by e-mail at pbelling@billingsgazette.com

===

[source: NativeNews; Wed, 16 Feb 2000 21:31:42]

Study shows effects of Western living
http://www.detnews.com/2000/health/0215/lede2/lede2.htm
By Tracy Boyd / Detroit News Health Writer

Need more evidence that Americans are headed for big trouble? A 30-year study of a small population of Native Americans indicates that the combination of a sedentary lifestyle and a Western diet can be lethal .

Researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases have been studying the Pima Indians of Arizona for more than 30 years. Traditionally, these Indians ate a diet that primarily consisted of beans and corn, and they had a high degree of physical activity as they hunted, fished and farmed for food. In 1890, the Pima diet consisted of only about 15 percent fat and was high in starch and fiber.

However, their 2,000-year-old tradition of working the land was disrupted in the early 1900s when American farmers settled upstream, changing the flow of irrigation. Since then, the Indians have been exposed to the Western diet and lifestyle, and the rates of obesity and its related complications have steadily increased. Now, half of these Pima Indians have diabetes, and 95 percent of those with diabetes are overweight.

But other Pima Indians living in the mountains of Mexico have no such Western lifestyle. These people are genetically the same as the Pima Indians of Arizona, but they have retained their demanding agricultural lifestyle and traditional vegetarian diet. Out of the 35 Mexican Pimas studied, only three had diabetes and the population as a whole was not overweight, says Dr. Eric Rasvussin, a scientist at the institute’s Phoenix Epidemiology and Clinical Research Branch.

Additional studies have shown that American Indians, Africans and Hispanics living in their native homelands, where the traditional diet is low in fat and daily activities involve walking, gardening, farming and physical labor, have very low rates of unhealthy weights and diabetes. But when these groups adopt the high-fat diet and inactive lifestyle typical of Western civilization, weight gain and its complications often result.

The conclusion: Our Western lifestyle acts as a poison.

---
Copyright © 2000, The Detroit News
 

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