PoAC: Preventative medicine
Sep. 14th, 2006 03:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
velvetpageMy MIL went for her regular checkup recently, with the doctor she's been going to for several decades now. He told her that her blood sugar was slightly elevated, just at the edge of normal range, and that because of this and a few other factors, he was going to send her to the diabetes prevention clinic. Today was her clinic appointment. I asked her permission to blog a bit about her experience there, because I found it to be an excellent example of our healthcare system operating at its best.
There were about ten people at the clinic, from a young woman to a man older than herself. They were from all walks of life. At least two were immigrants, one from India and the other from Eastern Europe. The things they all had in common were their elevated risk for type II diabetes, and a doctor's referral.
Staffing the clinic were a dietitian, a kinesiologist, and a public health nurse. Some of the clinic involved individual risk and lifestyle assessments, while the rest was comprised of an aerobic fitness test done as a group and a group discussion of trends and recommendations.
The dietitian evaluated each person's overall eating habits, explained the finer points of Canada's food guide and the way in which it is currently being reworked, and suggested some common mistakes dieters make. For example, one whole wheat bagel from the supermarket is equivalent to four slices of whole wheat bread in terms of servings; the things at the left of the rainbow of the food guide are better for you than the things at the right, being lower in fat and higher in nutrients; and going no-fat is often a mistake because companies tend to add sugar to no-fat foods, so low-fat is usually better. Each person received a tracking chart similar to the one I got as part of my prenatal care, and some personalized instruction about, for example, cutting out certain types of oils they were using and replacing them with better ones, replacing fatty meats with leaner cuts, and cutting out more processed foods.
The kinesiologist's job was to evaluate the exercise habits of the clients. For this, he ran a brief aerobics session, looked at each person's BMI, blood sugar, age, and normal exercise levels.
All of this information was charted and presented as a statement of risk. Most of the clients came out as high- or extreme-risk of type II diabetes.
They'll be going back several times in the next year for progress reports and additional instruction in healthy living. They'll also see their family doctors more often during that time for follow-up. The goals were to provide information, evaluate risk, and scare the clients into changing their lifestyles now, before their developing type II diabetes starts causing other health problems. Contrary to popular belief, the single biggest drain on our health care system is type II diabetes, because it leads to circulatory problems that are the culprits in so many other conditions.
Everything that happened at that clinic was paid for by our provincial health care plan. None of it was about an existing condition - it was all preventative, aimed at those who had already been screened as high-risk. If even one of those people does not develop type II diabetes because of the clinic, or if several of them get it later or milder than they otherwise would have, the clinic will have saved the province thousands of dollars and made the lives of those people considerably healthier and longer in the process.
We need programs like this in every city. We need them for a variety of identifiable conditions that have associated risks. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
There were about ten people at the clinic, from a young woman to a man older than herself. They were from all walks of life. At least two were immigrants, one from India and the other from Eastern Europe. The things they all had in common were their elevated risk for type II diabetes, and a doctor's referral.
Staffing the clinic were a dietitian, a kinesiologist, and a public health nurse. Some of the clinic involved individual risk and lifestyle assessments, while the rest was comprised of an aerobic fitness test done as a group and a group discussion of trends and recommendations.
The dietitian evaluated each person's overall eating habits, explained the finer points of Canada's food guide and the way in which it is currently being reworked, and suggested some common mistakes dieters make. For example, one whole wheat bagel from the supermarket is equivalent to four slices of whole wheat bread in terms of servings; the things at the left of the rainbow of the food guide are better for you than the things at the right, being lower in fat and higher in nutrients; and going no-fat is often a mistake because companies tend to add sugar to no-fat foods, so low-fat is usually better. Each person received a tracking chart similar to the one I got as part of my prenatal care, and some personalized instruction about, for example, cutting out certain types of oils they were using and replacing them with better ones, replacing fatty meats with leaner cuts, and cutting out more processed foods.
The kinesiologist's job was to evaluate the exercise habits of the clients. For this, he ran a brief aerobics session, looked at each person's BMI, blood sugar, age, and normal exercise levels.
All of this information was charted and presented as a statement of risk. Most of the clients came out as high- or extreme-risk of type II diabetes.
They'll be going back several times in the next year for progress reports and additional instruction in healthy living. They'll also see their family doctors more often during that time for follow-up. The goals were to provide information, evaluate risk, and scare the clients into changing their lifestyles now, before their developing type II diabetes starts causing other health problems. Contrary to popular belief, the single biggest drain on our health care system is type II diabetes, because it leads to circulatory problems that are the culprits in so many other conditions.
Everything that happened at that clinic was paid for by our provincial health care plan. None of it was about an existing condition - it was all preventative, aimed at those who had already been screened as high-risk. If even one of those people does not develop type II diabetes because of the clinic, or if several of them get it later or milder than they otherwise would have, the clinic will have saved the province thousands of dollars and made the lives of those people considerably healthier and longer in the process.
We need programs like this in every city. We need them for a variety of identifiable conditions that have associated risks. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.