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Diabetes: An Interview with Maria Menounos, Access Hollywood

I had the chance to interview diabetes spokesperson and Hollywood A-lister, Maria Menounos, at a recent diabetes conference. Prior to the interview I was given her Entertainment Industry Foundation biography for my review. Most of the biographies that I see belong to physicians and health policy experts – so it was an interesting change to read an entertainer’s biography.

Of note, Maria is a featured reporter on The Today Show and Access Hollywood – she has directed and produced several films and was listed in People Magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People.” She also landed in the top five of the askmen.com poll for “the girl men most want to marry” along with Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron.

But don’t let her beauty fool you – Maria has struggled with poverty, a chronically ill father, and her own weight issues. I enjoyed getting to know her better, and to learn about why she is such a passionate advocate for diabetes awareness. Enjoy our chat!

Dr. Val: Tell me a little bit about your dad’s diabetes and how you’ve been helping him to manage it.

Maria: My dad has type 1 diabetes, and he’s quite unusual in that he is extremely compliant with medical advice and dietary restrictions. He NEVER cheats. Many years ago he was told to avoid carbohydrates and so even when he was having a low blood sugar attack he’d refuse to drink juice to bring up his levels. Unfortunately my dad’s English isn’t so good (his native language is Greek and he has quite a language barrier with doctors) and I think a lot was lost in translation when he was given advice about how to manage his disease.

As a result of growing up in a poor neighborhood and not having access to more advanced medical care (along with the language barrier), my dad’s doctors were not particularly effective at communicating what he should be doing. My mom did her very best to follow their instructions religiously – she became his personal chef and kept him from eating carbohydrates.

My dad was in and out of the hospital all the time for low blood sugar, and because of a lack of coordination of care my family never realized why this was happening or what we could do to prevent it. So we were trying harder and harder to be more strict with his diet, which was in fact making the problem worse. My dad did janitorial work and would nearly pass out on the job due to a low carbohydrate diet. But since the doctors told him not to eat sweets or bread or pasta, he believed that his sickness was due to his not being strict enough, so he’d just eat less and less until he ended up weighing 140 pounds at 6 feet tall. My family was living in constant fear of him passing out again and needing to go to the hospital. We knew every ambulance worker and every fireman in our neighborhood by name because they were always at our house.

Finally when I moved to Hollywood and had some career success I was able to get my dad to a world renowned endocrinologist, Dr. Anne Peters.  Within three visits she straightened him out and explained how he did in fact need to eat some carbs. She got his blood sugars evened out and he never had to be hospitalized again.

What scares me the most is what’s happening to people who have diabetes and language barriers. They’re at incredible risk for misinformation, confusion, and poor care. Imagine how many people in this country are just like my dad – trying to follow advice they don’t fully understand? This is a real problem that we often overlook in diabetes education.

Dr. Val: As a Hollywood insider, how aware are your peers about diabetes and is there much talk amongst them about getting involved in campaigns to reduce type 2 diabetes?

Maria: I’m sure they are but I haven’t come across that many. It doesn’t come up that frequently. There haven’t been any breakthroughs in insulin therapy or any other huge scientific advances in diabetes care so the topic isn’t that newsworthy or “sexy.” It’s a real shame that it isn’t talked about more. Everyone seems to be aware that type 2 diabetes is preventable but no one seems to know how to do so. They don’t realize that you need to lose weight and exercise. But I learned about that when I had a weight problem.

Dr. Val: YOU had a weight problem?

Maria: As I said, I came from a diabetic home. We ate vegetables fresh from the garden every day and my mom was extremely careful about what we ate. We didn’t eat anything bad. My mom would buy ice cream and Doritos like, once a year when family was coming over. I didn’t even know what a bagel or a waffle was for most of my time growing up. Then I went to college and there was endless all-you-can-eat food. So over 3 or 4 years of eating pizza and I ended up gaining 40 pounds. One day I decided that I wanted to move to California and get into the business and I realized I needed to lose the weight.

I wrote down everything I ate in a week, and I realized that my problem was carbs. So I cut them back substantially and the weight just melted off. I lost about 20 pounds in several months, and then I added exercise to get the last 20 off. I’ve never looked back.

Dr. Val: How can we be more effective in getting Americans involved in their own health?

Maria: First of all, I think that we need to focus on educating children about healthy lifestyle choices. We have to get the message to them early. Kids enjoy knowing more than their parents and teaching them something new. So it’s really empowering for kids to learn about nutrition and then bring that knowledge home to their families and teach them a thing or two.

Obviously getting Americans to be more involved in their health is a very difficult challenge. Many people are struggling to get by and don’t have time to put their health first – they have to focus on work, paying their gas bill and putting food on the table. It will take a national, coordinated effort to really make a difference.

**Join Dr. Val’s Weight Loss Group**This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.

What Are The Odds?

My regular readers know that I’m a very conscientious person, and that although I try my best to prepare in advance for all manner of SNAFUs, I still fall victim to the occasional malfunction or “blonde moment.”

My most recent episode occurred en route to interviewing Governor Huckabee. I was really looking forward to our interview and was quite determined not to have anything go wrong. I packed my briefcase the night before the meeting, and made sure that my digital voice recorder was working, had batteries, etc. and that I had a pad of paper and a pen in case of emergency.

I carefully gathered all my things together and hopped in a cab (a black jeep with a yellow taxi sign on top) to the interview destination – a hotel lobby near the Newseum. I was re-reading my interview questions when I reached into my briefcase to get out my wallet to pay the driver. My heart sank. I had forgotten my wallet! My car-less husband (the first person I hit up for cash) was at a doctor’s appointment across town. I had no friends meeting me at the hotel lobby (and I certainly wasn’t going to ask Gov. Huckabee if he could lend me $20). I explained the situation to the driver and sheepishly asked if he had a card or if I could arrange to meet him later on in the day once I had my wallet.

The driver saw how sincerely sorry I was – and told me that he had no cards, and that I should just consider the ride complimentary. I promised him that I wasn’t in the habit of stiffing taxi drivers, and that I really did want to pay him back. He would have none of it. “It’s not a problem, ma’am. Don’t worry about it.” So off I went to meet Gov Huckabee – and I only dropped my Blackberry once in front of him.

Flash forward 4 days… I’m returning home from The Big Sleep Show (it was in Chicago) and waiting in the taxi line at the Reagan National Airport. This time I have hubby with me (he’s always good for a $20) so I figure the cab ride home will be smooth (though I’ve had some bad experiences with DC cabs in the past). As I get to the front of the line, I look over at the cab that we’re about to get into. It’s a black jeep with a yellow taxi sign on top.

I ask the driver if he remembers a woman who didn’t pay him for an early morning cab ride a few days prior. “Oh, yeah.” He said. “You mean the doctor lady?”

“That was ME!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t know how I was going to repay you for your kindness. And now I can do it in person! This is quite a coincidence.”

The driver smiled and was quiet the whole ride home.

I paid him for both rides plus a nice tip. “Keep paying it forward, brother.” I said, “you never know when it will come back to you.”

What are the odds?This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.

How To Celebrate Mother’s Day: Join The Woman Challenge!

My blogger colleague, Trisha, at Ideas for Women told me about an exciting, virtual walk across America that is being sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services. The event starts tomorrow (Mother’s Day, May 11th) and you can sign up for various routes. I chose the cross-country route that begins in San Francisco and ends in my city: Washington, DC. I guess I felt inspired by my recent chat with Mike Huckabee about how he lost weight and got fit.

The idea is to use a pedometer (or your best guess work) to track your daily steps, with a goal of about 10,000 per day. You can tally your steps each day so that they contribute to the grand total contributed by your team mates and others in the Woman Challenge.

You can also track your participation in my “Lose 20 Pounds” group here at Revolution Health.

Care to join me? My team is called “Dr. Val” and my home city is Washington, DC. You can also leave your username (that you chose when you signed up at the Woman Challenge site) and home town in the comments section below and I’ll invite you personally.

Don’t live in the US? All the more reason to have a virtual vacation here and walk across the country with me!

All those of you who are moms (or any of you who’ve ever had a mom – ha, ha) please join me in getting out into the fresh, virtual air in honor of Mother’s Day. Imagine how good we’ll feel 8 weeks from now…

Happy Mother’s Day!

This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.

Women’s Health Expo: You Can Visit It In Your Pajamas

Revolution Health is always looking for creative ways to bring important health information to the public. This week, in honor of Mother’s Day, we’ve created a virtual women’s health expo – and we’ll donate to the featured non-profit organizations for every click you make.

So why not do some good for the following non-profits by visiting their booths at the virtual expo? This is the easiest way for you to support your favorite non-profit – you can even visit them in your pajamas.

Y-Me National Breast Cancer Association

Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA)

National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)

National Women’s Health Resource Center

The Wellness Community

Women’s Sports Foundation

Go Red For Women

Healthy Weight For Life

Society for Women’s Health Research

*Go to the Women’s Health Expo*

This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.

Governor Mike Huckabee on US Healthcare

This is a continuation of my interview with Mike Huckabee at the National Changing Diabetes Program conference in Washington, DC. In my previous post I asked Mike about his weight loss journey, and in this post I asked him some global questions about healthcare. My regular readers will appreciate that my digital voice recorder did not malfunction during this interview, though I did drop my Blackberry at one point out of sheer enthusiasm. Gov. Huckabee was the first to reach down and help me get it. What a gentleman!

Dr. Val: Your friend, Dr. Fay Boozman, said “We need to stop treating snake bites and start killing snakes.” Tell me what that means in practical terms.

Huckabee: Healthcare in America is reactive and is geared towards intervening in catastrophic situations, when what we should be doing is focusing on preventing them. The whole system is upside down. It’s like we’re focused on putting Humpty Dumpty back together again instead of keeping him from falling off the wall. Our healthcare system is based on a broken egg concept.

So the key thing that we have to change in healthcare is to focus our resources on prevention and a healthy lifestyle.

Dr. Val: You said that your hope was that “‘Healthy Arkansas’ will spread like a highly contagious but benevolent virus that could become the genesis of ‘Healthy America.'” Can you give me a virus update?

Huckabee: We did in fact launch “Healthy America” and it was the most successful Governors’ initiative in that we had more states participate in this than any other NGA (National Governors’ Association) initiative. Forty-three states launched state-based health initiatives for preventive health. Some were more aggressive than others.

We began the initiative because there was a new awareness of the need to change the healthcare model from intervention to prevention. The concept of Healthy America was to influence behaviors at work, at play, at home, and at school. These programs have been remarkably successful. For example, in the first year, the average productivity of state employees increased by $3400/year. And that’s not to mention the savings in healthcare costs. The average diabetic spends 8.3 days/year in the hospital. The cost of those days could pay for 7 years of diabetes counseling and medication. It’s as if the choice is between a new oil filter or a new engine – which do you think is going to be less expensive?

Dr. Val: Revolution Health is attempting to encourage behavior modification through social networking and online, physician-led programs. What do you think are the strengths and limitations of this approach?

Huckabee: First of all the strengths are more dramatic than you may realize. When we used the online approach in Arkansas, we did health risk assessments followed by online coaching for everything from smoking cessation to weight control. Online programs can be very successful because they’re instant and accessible 24 hours/day. The socialization becomes very important because peer pressure can be harnessed to challenge people to walk more steps or lose more pounds than the others in their group.

Online approaches aside, the key to improving health in America is to create an atmosphere of healthy behavior. This cultural change may take a generation to achieve, which is why most politicians don’t touch it. Politicians like to deal with issues that can be dealt with in an election cycle, not a generation.

However, America’s approach to littering, seatbelt laws, smoking, and drunk driving are four examples of real changes we’ve made in this country over time. The changes took place in three stages: attitude change, atmosphere change, then an action is changed.

Attitude change involves giving people information that changes the way they think about an issue. Atmosphere change means making unhealthy behaviors difficult to participate in (like taking away ash trays and putting up a no-smoking sign), and finally the government codifies into law the new behavioral norm.

The government is usually the last player, not the first, because people have to create the behavioral norm before the government can enact laws. If the government tries to mandate a personal habit, then the debate will not be over the merits of the approach, but over the personal liberties of  people to do what they want to do. And in America,  the government always loses that argument. So what you have to do is get enough Americans believing that taking care of themselves is the right thing to do, and then there will be the demand for government to put that into law.

We don’t have a healthcare crisis in America, we have a health crisis. And if we dealt with the health crisis we would resolve the healthcare crisis. The real reason we’re in trouble is because 80% of the money we spend on healthcare is a result of chronic disease. And that chronic disease is primarily the result of over-eating, under-exercising and smoking. It’s our lifestyle that’s killing us.This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.

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