Tackling the diagnosis of diabetes

Diabetes.

It can be a scary diagnosis.

For many, behaviors must change down to how you move your body and what you put into it.

But what’s perhaps even scarier is that an estimated 6 million people have diabetes and don’t even know it. Frequently, Type 2 diabetes, which is growing quickly in prevalence, develops in stages. In the early stages many people don’t notice the changes affecting their body in order to prevent the disease from taking hold.

Dr. Sherif Rizkalla recently spoke to a group of several dozen individuals as part of Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Hurst-Euless-Bedford’s Advances in Medicine lecture series. As an internal medicine physician, Dr. Rizkalla frequently treats patients’ diabetes and tries to help them navigate the complex maze of medications and lifestyle changes necessary to improve their health.

Dr. Rizkalla says that educating patients is the key to success. “You need to understand the disease process because on a day-to-day basis it is up to you, the patient, to manage diabetes yourself,” he said. “The doctor really functions as the coach.”

Some steps that individuals can take to treat or prevent diabetes is losing weight – even a 5-10% weight loss can be very effective – exercising and eating the proper diet for your individual case. For people newly diagnosed with diabetes, it’s often very effective to visit a diabetes educator for one-on-one information about the proper diet and weight loss program. Taking the medications as prescribed and monitoring blood sugars is very important to see what steps are appropriate for reaching their goals.

The bottom line, Dr. Rizkalla said, “it all comes down to self-management and personal ownership of the disease.”

For more information on diabetes or programs offered at Texas Health HEB, please visit www.diabetes.org or www.texashealth.org.

Training Exercises at Texas Health Sports Performance HEB

Melanoma and tanning

Summer is now officially here, but before you spend hours relaxing poolside or visit a tanning booth it is important to consider the latest research on melanoma.

In July 2009 the World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced that tanning beds using UV were “carcinogenic to humans”. Not surprisingly, the International Smart Tan Network attacked these findings and other related studies as biased and non-supportive.

A new study at the Minnesota Cancer Surveillance System, a population-based statewide cancer registry has found that tanning bed usage is associated with a 74%increased risk for melanoma. This is significant because this study looked at patients diagnosed with invasive cutaneous melanoma from July 2004 to December 2007; they completed a questionnaire and a phone interview. These 1,167 patients along with 1,101 healthy control patients participated in the study from December 2004 to March 2009. Approximately 63% of the patients and 51.1% of the healthy control participants reported using tanning beds. The results include:
• Increased risk was strongly correlated with frequency of use
• Highest risk was among those who had tanned for 10 or more years compared to those who had only tanned for one year
• Patients were more likely to have reported painful burns while tanning indoors (they thought they were protected from burns when using tanning beds)
• Risk was especially elevated among users of UBV-enhanced and primarily UVA-emitting devices.

There are no biases here - these are just the facts! These folks did or did not use tanning beds and did or did not get melanoma. Melanoma is increasing and according to Allan Halpern, MD chief of dermatology services at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, “There’s no question that the data have been mounting and we know that tanning beds are part of the problem.”

Ok, you may be thinking that you don’t use tanning beds and you never will. You are going to just get your nice tan from the sun - please read on. One of the established risk factors for melanoma is UV light. So tanning under the sun or in the tanning bed exposes you to UV light!

So many of us look at a tan as a “healthy glow”. Not so. A tan is actually a sign of damage to the skin. Wrinkles, drying, brown spots are just not attractive, but melanoma is deadly! You may live a lifetime and end up with those wrinkles etc, but unfortunately you may be one of the more than 60,000 people a year who are diagnosed with melanoma in the United States. Unfortunately, it can appear at any time, young or old.

Don’t get me wrong- I LOVE the sun. I’m a Southerner through and through, but there was a reason ladies wore bonnets and men wore hats. Visit the American Academy of Dermatology or the American Cancer Society and learn how to protect your children and yourself. If you are interested in taking part in a clinical trial on melanoma or skin cancer, click here.

For more information on the tanning bed study, click here.

Jenny Ellis, RN, MS, AOCN
Oncology Nurse Specialist
Texas Health HEB