GHANAIAN UK NURSES ON DIABETES

As part of the 30th anniversary celebration of the Ghana Nurses Association-UK, the Association held a health Promotion programme to create awareness on various health topics.
I hope this Diabetes talk will be beneficial to you, your family and friends.

Hi welcome back to the channel thank you so much for tuning in today I’m heading towards the worldw worth Methodist Church in southeast London it’s the 30th anniversary celebration of the Ghana Nurses Association of UK and today they’re holding a health promotion program as part of its anniversary

Celebrations and as you can see from the h fent preparation is going on arranging of the chairs and set of the various stations where various Health topics will be discussed so we have um people from prostate cancer UK and then we have the diabetic awareness station where you

Can see all the blood monitoring machines ready to test people and also the information leflet on diabetes and then we go to these two tables which is which deals with Breast Care issues with breast cancer menopause you know issues concerning women and then we move on to the blood pressure monitoring station where

People’s blood pressures will be monitored I’m at the diabetic awareness table I took the opportunity to check my blood sugar level as I haven’t done this for a while G is Association we are Health promoting and this is the stand for the diabetes Department presently we are just checking randomly checking

Sugar levels of people and what we do is if it’s above what it should be we will sign post you to go and see your um GP as we have that privilege you know but otherwise we will soon have a talk and I’m going to talk about how diabetes comes about

And how we should look after ourselves because statistically one in three of black people all of us are prone to diabetes and one in six of Asians are prone to diabetes so it’s worth bringing the awareness to our people so that and it’s all eating well making some exercises and Warden of

Diabetes my name is Martha nent I am here today to have BL blood sugar check because I have a very strong family history of diabetes and as a result of that I am checking my blood sugar to know what it is and to look after myself this is a health promotion program and

We all need to look after ourselves it’s time for the diabetes talk and you might want to listen carefully I certainly learned one or two things this is our musles and this is the pancreas now this is our body this is the body that I’m standing here with and the blood circulation

Going through so this is a very simple straightforward thing to become a diabetic you got a problem with your pancreas that’s why that is a very important thing there now this is the cycle so we eat say with all these Foods you are eating when you finish come and check your sugar

Levels it will be interesting to know so this when you eat it goes into the system as sugar anything you eat whether it’s got sugar or not is going to tend to sugar in your bloodstream this is what you should all know it’s very important because it gives us energy but as soon

As it hits so the purple bit you see is actually the sugar so as soon as you eat it enters blood the bloodstream as sugar and then the pancreas it’s an very important organ it will release the green beit you see is insulin what it

Does is as soon as it sense you’ve eaten then it’s going to release this insulin to clear the sugar out of the bloodstream it’s good you listen to this very carefully it clears it into the muzzles because you see our activities is by our musles so it’s been done in

Such a way that it clears it it goes into our musles and then we are very strong but notice this as you can see this is just the morning breakfast so by the time it comes to l lunch there is no sugar in your BL

Stream So lunch time you need to top it up and then the whole cycle begins again this is the cycle so you eat it turns to Sugar into the bloodstream the pancreas relieves insulin secretes insulin to take it out of the bloodstream and then you go and

Eat again you know so it takes approximately that’s why we have three Ms a day it takes 6:00 12:00 and then by 6:00 the the rest of the night you are going to sleep you’re not supposed to eat at night but then we are nurses we

Work at night so it’s all a matter of discretion if you are type one if you’ve had type one diabetes you don’t have a pancreas so you are going to have to imagine this there is no pancreas so if there is no pancreas and you eat and it

Tends to sugar and there’s no pancreas with with insulin tell me what will happen so if you don’t have a pancreas like I said put your imagination to it if you don’t have a pancreas it means you were either born without a pancreas or some sort of autoimmune system killed

It off so you become a type one so some of them normally children we find out very early by 6 months we would know that you are diabetic because they can’t keep their food down they can breastfeed and then immediately the first thing a doctor would do is check if the person

Is di the baby is diabetic so we pick them up very early you know but as a grownup when you have pancreatitis if it’s a very severe one it kills off the pancreas and then you immediately turn into as soon as it kills off the pancreas you need insulin because

Without insulin nobody lives you need your insulin to be able able to live so that’s type one no pancreas or some sort of problem has caused it now with type two you’ve got your pancreas but instead of giving you a surge of insulin like you know you’ve eating is gone into the

Bloodstream and I I must say it takes a a sequence to get to the bloodstream when you eat it doesn’t just hits the bloodstream it has to go through circulation and all that to get there so that’s the time so you have your pancreas working okay it hits the

Bloodstream but the problem is instead of this surge you have just droplets of insulin coming out so in that case you don’t have enough insulin to clear the sugar so with a type two if you come here you still see the purple bit over

Here and what they do is is they eat on top of it and then it accumulates then it goes around the circle again very little insulin comes out then they eat more and then it accumulates now this is why we have to talk of signs and symptoms so once it

Becomes like beginning the body is a wonderful mechanism so what happens is it cops it will cope and it will to cope and it will cope but then it gets to a place when you have to run to the L that’s normally the first signs and

Symptom is you tend to run to the L very quickly so and it has nothing to do with your drinking so say you get up in the morning perhaps you you we in the night like me I we like 10 times before I get

Up if you don’t we and you weigh one two you’ll be weing quite fre frequently you know and then perhaps you don’t even drink but you still have to run to the lop and when you go to the L some people itch down below I don’t think it’s only

For ladies even gentlemen they it down below and they it like M you know so say you don’t we but you start eing down below immediately you eat and it’s not going when you go to your GPS they are going to say oh let me give you a py or

Let me give you some tablets but the problem with diabetes is it will come back after as soon as the pestry goes up and do what it is it comes back again now if it’s not diabetes it will usually heal but if it doesn’t then you should

Think you know those things in your head should run and say I’m not happy with this another thing is if you’re not weighing you’re not getting in each down below you drink loads of water so for instance if I’m on the street and I see somebody with a 2

Lit Coke drinking it I know instinctively that that person is diabetic because you know the body craves sugar so as you are you’ve got too much sugar in your system and the body is not coping you crave more sugar so people tend to drink Coke the red

Coke and not the black black and red one the red one they drink it upon drink it and you know they are thirsty but somehow instead of drinking water they would drink Coke it’s a phenomenon you don’t understand but it’s very common particularly the young ones you know so

That’s a symptom another symptom is blood eyes you don’t have it you don’t have we we you don’t have anything but you begin to BL you can’t put that down you begin to blare in your eyes so you’ll be reading you somebody who read avidly suddenly you can’t read you can see you

See things double double double double now if you have glasses like mine you would immediately think oh my glasses is need sort out or something of that s so you go to the Opticians and then they do your glasses and you are still not seeing the next thing is your GP tell

Your GP you know what I’ve been getting blur eyes your GP will do a diabetes check for you going on with the signs and symptoms another one is getting boils so if you get balls under your arms and your crevices you know crevices so between your BM hole down below there um under

Your crevices and under your boobs suddenly you get a boil think diabetes immediately just why should you get a boil you must have infection to get a bow but you see the diabetes acts as infection it has to come out of the body as long as there’s so much accumulation

Of sugar it has to find a way and so it comes out as balls and then they have also found out that it actually goes around your brain so with older and elderly people they get dementia and you find out that they have been diabetic it’s never been diagnosed

Because the poor people are not going to worry doctors so they don’t say anything and by the time you realize they’ve got dementia because the sugar is going to destroy the brain it gives you Strokes also so this is the signs and symptoms and I’m venturing into complications and

The complications I start from the brain as you can see you know so your eyesight your brain and oh don’t forget your teeth nine out of 10 you are getting carries because of the sugar because the sugar is a destructive thing it enters all the um or organs and messes it up

Big time right now if you come down that’s the Hat now the heart beats comfortably if you have too much sugar it over beats you get palpitation for no reason now I take I get palpitation when I take coffee but I had to find out myself because I was convinced I’m

Getting diabetes knowing what I know you know but then it was coffee caffeine so I had to cut down and go caffeine free you know so this is what we do slowly now because it beit high and sharp you are going to get hypertension most people have

Hypertension and they think oh it’s in the family no perhaps your sugar level is making you get hypertension now when you come further down the kidneys the reason why I became a diabetes n i i was a dialysis n for many years and in the dialysis unit 70% to 80% of the patients

Are diabetics so in my Hospital you are forced to do the diabetic course and this is how I came into diabetes because they force you to go and do the course everybody’s diabetic you better go and learn about it and we used to be terrified about diabetes because you have to learn all

The organs we didn’t want to learn that but it’s it’s a wonderful thing if you know so this is how I came into diabetes you know I I learned it and I thought I’m stuck no moving again and that’s how now so that’s the kidneys he goes into

Your kidneys it’s overflooded the kidney goes very angry because sugar should never pass through the kidney and the reason being mean that it’s got a fine mesh if you know what I mean a fine mesh and it sips all these things now sugar is a huge molecule so when it goes

Through the mesh it BS holes into it and then all the good articles that should stay in your body passes through these holes so gradually the kidney shuts down and then you have to go for dialysis and it starts from diabetes right now when you come further down the

Bladder remember I told you you run to the L and come back you may not run to the L but what happens is the sugar accumulates in your bladder and the genital area so what happens is that in the genital area we have something called the vagina flora and this Flora

Is like little animals that eat infection they clear all your bladder and your vagina and everything that’s what they should do is they job but when sugar is overflooded they get drunk the sugar come and they think wow what is this and so they drink it get drunk and

That is the cause of the itch down there because the Flora are half asleep or dead and so there’s nothing to clear that place for you you know so as you can see it’s eating slowly then of course the bladder you are going to get bladder problems when you you can’t we

Shoba and things like that you know it all starts with diabetes so you come further down and there are things called diabetes can affect your feet now to begin with you have pins and needles you have some people don’t even know they have diabetes but they get pin

And needles they have crumbs they have funny feelings in their feet and so they go to the GP to say my feet are aching I can’t even describe the pain you know when they come to me and say that I instinctively know that have you checked

Your sugar level they’ll say well no and when you check it you find out that they are diabetic so they haven’t had the wee bits they haven’t had the drinking bits they haven’t had nothing but their feet is killing them and there’s this myth of

A lot a lot of people saying when you get diabetes they chop your feet off it’s not true but let me tell you the sequence that leads to it because when you get the sugar Flats the nerve endings in your feet it goes around it and kills it that’s the difference it actually

Kills it so you get numbness in your feet like forever you get pins and needles in your feet like forever we have medication that we give to take all these pains off but in the long run you are diabetic so what happens is your nerves are gone

So that means you have no pain so you walk on a nail say you are walking bare footage which we do in Africa a lot you walk a nail enters your feet you w’t feel the pain go through your feet so you get a wound you don’t know you have

A wound and then it fests fests and what do you do you get an ulcer and before they find out is so bad they have to chop your feet off that is what happens that’s the sequence so if you look after yourself everything will be fine some

Older people get the numbness in their fingers so they they notice you pick something and it drops it’s all part and parcel of it and Auntie is going to talk to you about food food food I’ll show you what makes the African fight a diabetes that we cannot

Win look at this the food on there I want you to study them if you eat these sugars this talk is for you this is is what call the diabetes because when you go to lectures in England we give you the itat well chart if anybody has seen

The eat well chart has you got any of this food on it so we we get educated in UK with eat well childart have smoothies have this when we go home in our culture this is what we meet so how can we manage our diabetes that is why we fail

Because if you want to talk to Africans Asian and you use the E2 chart it doesn’t work because when they go home our African kitchen our African Chop Bar African food restaurant cook this even in DNA we have w we have jov we don’t have it

Chart so this is our problem we’re going to use pictures for you to take powerful messages home now I’ve put fish there eat more moderate and eat less it l yes we’ve got C foot there we’ve got shaki shaki or animal shaki or tribe yeah we’ve got trotes

I’ve got H what you call the skin wle yes we eat white is W cood this this this is what we eat you use to cook am I lying yes do you have a nice rum steak you eat or this and that you eat some but in African kitchen at home and in

England this is the the food we are eating so my message is take the pictures eat lesss of what you see at the bottom any protein that has has that has got four legs any protein cow sheep goat got four legs eat less what do I

Say four legs eat less we have a lot of research then about gar con H what TOA a all those things we have research on it and we going to see what African foods we can recommend when we at home so if you’ve got Banu for example and I have got

Con which one would you recommend to a diabetic in Ghana exactly con is because of the process the banku because we use corn and casava together is higher in GI look at this H H picture that’s all I have every little blood drop or every sign is 5 gram of

Carbohydrate five grams of carbohydrate in every little drop so look at the gentleman with the banana it’s a moderate or small looking banana and it’s got say 15 gram of carbohydrate it enters your blood stream look at how many drops of carbohydrates or glucose a small amount isn’t it look at below the

N bread the N bread has got a lot of carbohydrate isn’t it it’s got so much carb say every five is 5 15 that’s 30 that’s 45 look at your bloodstream it’s got that sugar in that going to bloodstream sister Gloria talked about your sugar what it does is that when the

Blood sugar Rises those of us we call hemoglobin A1c that is GL gated the sugar molecule attaches itself to the hemoglobin molecule so it becomes glycated hemoglobin hemoglobin A1c and that’s what it does this donut is very smooth if the sugar attaches it that is what it does so that your blood vessels

Becomes rigid the kidney becomes affected in the brains becomes affected because the suppleness in the elasticity of the blood vessels avoid all been glycated so it become rigid and they don’t work well that’s why you had cardiovascular problem that’s why you got this because the sugar is cated is

Floating in the blood and it CS everything and damages it so look at the two and the higher the hemoglobin A1c the more coin you get and it’s over time it doesn’t work anymore all the organs begin to suffer so that is what eating two too much of Fufu too much of banku

Everything does so I’m going to ask you if you I’m a diabetic I’m on insulin if you’re going to recommend to me Helen what bowl of Fufu would you suggest for me that to eat which one the first the second or the third one the third one

Because how we manage is POR control so we can eat Fufu we can eat B we can eat anything you want but portion control so I’m using I’m using our own food to talk about diabetes I’m not going to eat eat water chart or or things that we don’t

Normally H use because when we go home we get worried and I get telephone calls I’m eating I’m P I’m eating this so we have to be true to ourself and use our culture to educate people you see you see that the first one and the second

One you see if you look at the plate here it has got everything on but it’s got a bit of salad it’s got a bit of small amount of doof it’s got fried plantain and the fried plantain is only two instead of a heap jolof some of noodles

And fried plantain it makes your sugar go right up and it get it glycated all your organs C with sugar so look at the jolof at the bottom look at how big it is and how many PL 10 strips there and look at this one so you commend that one

The way we use pictures is that in marola Market I don’t use any data I use pictures so if you show anybody who does the cooking at the restaurant this is the how much you must give it to your husband he or she understands more than

Writing giving them lifet to read so we don’t give LIF to read we use pictures so you can imagine imagine what you’ve seen and you picture speaks a thousand words so within five minutes you take something home I love K and fried fish

And K look at that K two balls of huge K two huge and the fish is fried and look at that one but it has got it has got avocado avocado peir it has got more vegetables so that what we e because of the time constraint because I’ll show you

Pictures and pictures and pictures of of non staric carbohydrate that’s your broccolis your carrots and all that beautiful pictures especially all the pulses all the beans and the lentils that you can use to bulk up your food and it’s a good healthy protein instead of having too much carbohydrate you

Reduce it so I go to the K Sellers and I said give something like that to your customers and advise them to slow down there they understand this shows you the curve everything you see the small amount of rice medium and high look at how high the cve is that means your

Blood sugar is up in the sky right up in the Artic by the time it comes down the damage is done I’m doing swaps meal swaps so if you look at here I’ve got the super mold I’ve got P Puff the donuts both loat I have got the chinin ATO and I

Have got the meat pie which is a classic ghanian packages we go to funerals you go to parties everywhere you go there will be a small bag or small box of these food laed with super malt now what I’m saying is that consider that one we’ve got mixed nuts

We’ve got mixed berries and we’ve got fruit and we’ve got water you don’t have to read the books you’ve got the answers just think about swapping and you’ll be healthy yes look at the white bread white bread and it has got the sugar in white bread when you eat white bread it

Absorbed very quickly so we using either granery bread whole milal bread and I want you anything that is whole meal is better than white so anything that is whole meal so go for whole meal basmati rice whole meal bread anything that is whole heat whole meal whole mix is much

Preferable again here you’ve got regular white potatoes and sweet potatoes regular white potatoes has got compared to sweet potatoes got more fiber and fiber is almost is is the best because it’s it give you much more roughage and the stomach empty slowly any food that takes longer time to break down into

Glucose inside you and let it gradually absorb into the bloodstream is better than a food that absorb very quickly so the example is that this white uh potatoes compared to sweet potatoes prefer sweet potato is much better so you recommend that to people look this

Is banku and this is Fufu the Fufu I’m talking about is H Cava and plantain mix Fufu or is just based on Research that has been done by ghanaians Nigerians this is only within the last 5 years because of the processes of the food if you have

Con cont the way it’s dried the way it’s processed it ATT trap some of the carbohydrate particles and make it the glycemic index is slower so when you eat that it’s slowly absorbed and the glucose is broken down slowly to con to to to to say banku banku is a COR base

We find that Cava based preparation because the processes are hot cold hot cold it attracts the carbohydrate inside the food and makes it slowly to break down into glucose and therefore slowly absorb into the blastroom keeping your GI or glycemic index lower and that is better for everybody but particularly so

For diabetics or pre-diabetics so exercise to Crown it all what you what I’ve shown you if you go and eat a h huge amount of say con again is no good so portion sizes you have to have small amount and I want you to say that walking is an ace

Walking walking is an ace exercise but exercise have only chosen one exercise because of time so walking is free you can walk in your mama you can walk in your trousers you can walk in your skirt you can walk anywhere the rest of the exercises you have to change into life

To go to the G or swimsuit and all that walking is free and if you walk you benefit from loss of weight your diabetes is better your heart health is better everywhere is better so please ladies walking is and walking is an ace so four legs portion control and walking is an ace

Thank you very much