Diabetes speaker: Prevention, education are wave of future

Nov. 15--Health coaches and wellness plans, not necessarily better insurance coverage, could be the wave of the future.

"Insurance companies don't want to pay for us to be sick but for the things that will keep us well," Linda Gabe, a Methodist Hospital certified health coach, diabetes educator and registered nurse, told the Lions Club of Henderson Tuesday during its lunchtime meeting.

"As it's written now with our national health care, certain things are considered elected coverage," she said. "And I know it sounds tough, but if you're 80 years old, currently, the way it's planned, insurance isn't doing much for that person."

"The bottom line is -- we're on our own as far as being healthy," Gabe said. That's just one of the reasons people need to be educated about diseases, some preventable and/or manageable, such as diabetes.

Diabetes education involves knowing whether the disease runs in the family, what the disease actually is and how it can be prevented.

"You might hear people talking about how our society is too obese. But there's more to it than that." she said. "Insulin's No. 1 job is to lower blood sugar and it's No. 2 job is to store fat. So obesity is part of the disease. I'm not saying that can't be overcome or at least improve that risk factor."

Simple sugars, unhealthy fats and a sedentary lifestyle "help lead to diabetes," Gabe said.

"In 1994, in Kentucky, only 4.3 percent of the population had diabetes," she said. "In 2014, 11.3 percent of Kentucky's population had diabetes."

"We rank sixth in the nation with the most cases of diabetes," Gabe said. While this isn't a good ranking, she said, there is another perspective.

"Perhaps here in Kentucky we do a better job of finding people who have diabetes," she said. "So if they are diagnosed, that increases the state's numbers. If they get education, they live longer and are healthier, that increases the numbers of those living with diabetes in Kentucky. So I'm not sure that our national ranking reflects a poor health state or that we are on top of things."

While unhealthy eating habits and a lack of physical fitness can lead to diabetes, so can smoking, Gabe said.

"Nicotine causes insulin resistance," she said. "The cells throughout the body just ignore the insulin so the sugar stays in your blood ... If you have insulin resistance going on, the pancreas overproduces insulin. When a pancreas overproduces insulin, a person gains weight and retains fluid." All of this can lead to diabetes.

"It's important to know that diabetes is the No. 1 cause of nothing," Gabe said. "Uncontrolled diabetes is the No. 1 cause of adult cases of blindness," she added, and it can also lead to other serious health issues.

But with all of that, Gabe said, "there's hope."

"The Center for Disease Control did a trial in 2009 with people whose blood work fell into the category of pre-diabetes. The goal was to hopefully prevent them from getting diabetes and it worked," she said.

"Prevention and wellness are the wave of the future," Gabe said. "Methodist Hospital has a diabetes prevention program, a smoking cessation program and a new one called 'Freedom from Smoking' " which will hopefully be introduced in 2017.

"Education and (preventative measures)" such as exercise, go a long way in preventing diabetes, she said.

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