According to the National Credentialing Board for Diabetes Educators, (NCBDE) the CDCES® Exam Content Outline will be updated starting July 1^st, 2019.

To celebrate this update, we will be basing our 2019 Questions of the Week on this content outline. (See a snippet of the NCBDE content outline to the left or click on it to see the complete outline.)

Question of the Week – February 12th, 2019

These targeted questions are designed to help assess your knowledge on the topics critical to diabetes educators.

In addition, if you are preparing to take the exam, we strongly encourage you to go through each of these sub-categories and rate your knowledge on a scale of 1-5.  Based on this self-assessment, spend the majority of your study time on the topic areas you are least comfortable with. This approach will help you become familiar with the exam content and to use your limited study time wisely.

Assessment of the Diabetes Continuum – Learning  

For this question in this series, we focus on the Assessment Section, under learning. Here is the question that addresses learning goals and needs of the learner. Good luck!

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The benefits of fiber have been supported by over a 100 years of research. A large new study reveals that eating more fiber can lower your risk of developing serious illness over time. 

“When compared with those who consume very little fiber, people at the high end of the fiber-eating spectrum saw their risk for dying from heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and/or colon cancer plummet by 16 to 24 percent, investigators reported.”

Exciting enough, the more fiber a person consumed, the risk of developing those illness continued to decrease. The range of illness that higher intake of fiber seemed to impact surprised scientists. 

The results come from 185 observational studies and 58 clinical trails performed over four decades. 

Researchers say that American’s on average, eat less than 15 grams of fiber per day. However increasing intake to 25-29 gms per day is just “adequate.” The more fiber a person incorporates in their diet, the greater the decrease in overall risk of an early death.

Every additional 15-gram bump in daily whole grain intake was found to curtail an individual’s overall risk of early death — as well as their risk of early death from heart disease — by between 2 and 19 percent.

Researchers also found that increasing fiber intake had no risky health effects and that it is never too late to start embracing fiber every day!  

“When considering all the trials of increasing fiber intakes, those participants that did reduced both their body weight and the total cholesterol in their blood, two important predictors of disease.”

Although none of these discoveries are surprising, scientists hope this will lead to changes in dietary recommendation. “This is just one more piece of evidence that supports and further solidifies the recommendations registered dietitian nutritionists have been making for years,” said Sandon.

It is never to late to start eating healthy and fiber may be a great starting point for many! 

Here are some common foods and their fiber content:

• 1 slice of whole wheat bread has 2 grams 
• 1 cup of boiled broccoli has 5 grams
• 1 medium orange has 3 grams
• 1 cup of cooked black beans has 15 grams.

To learn more: “More Proof High-Fiber Diets Help Prevent Cancers, Heart Disease” – Health Day

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February Newsletter now available!

by Coach Beverly Thomassian RN, MPH, CDCES, BC-ADM

 

 

For this newsletter, we appreciate the complex interaction between our state of health or dis-ease and our microbiome. We explore how exercise and immigration impacts microbial health and discuss glucose meter accuracy.

Finally, Coach Beverly shares insights into her motivation to hold the first ever Women Leaders in Diabetes Conference.

• Immigration & Gut Bacteria
• Exercise boosts gut bacteria
• Gut Bacteria’s influence on drug effectiveness
• How accurate are Glucose Meters?
• Women Leaders in Diabetes Conference: Insights and Motivation from Coach Beverly

Click here to read our new newsletter!

Click here to sign up to receive our newsletters via email

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This week we kick off our #WCW campaign (“Woman Crush Wednesday”) with our fearless leader, Coach Beverly Thomassian.  

Why do we need a Women’s Conference? – Coach Beverly shares her vision

“Girls should learn history. And make it.”

– Malala

On our drive to school, I asked my teenage son if he could name any female scientists. He couldn’t name one.

I came up with a handful, but that was even a stretch.

Women make up half the population, but often our stories go untold.

As a frequent attendee at large scientific conferences, I have noticed the lack of female presenters. In many of the published national diabetes standards, there is a notable disparity in the ratio of men to women authors.

Yet, all around me, I work with a collection of smart, progressive, wildly talented and compassionate diabetes advocates, educators and providers who are women.

They contribute in countless ways, some bold and some subtle, to improve diabetes care and provide a vision forward for future diabetes professionals.

This first ever Women Leaders in Diabetes Conference was born out of these observations. I wanted to create a meeting place to celebrate this diverse group of visionary leaders. To shine a light on what they have accomplished and contributed to improve diabetes care while creating an arc of change into tomorrow’s landscape.

Just as importantly, I wanted to provide a place for attendees to share their stories. A place to sit at a table with other diabetes professionals who have fought, succeeded, failed, got back up and kept going, even though the barriers seemed insurmountable.

Our stories contain years of wisdom, hard won and accumulated through experience, trial and error and careful study. Let’s bring these innovations and stories to light.

Lastly, I wanted to open a window of dedicated time for hard working diabetes professionals to allow for inspiration and a safe place to share struggles and set-backs, honestly and openly. And through this sharing and group problem solving, the opportunity to see possibilities that might have been hidden or obscured by doubt or by pure busyness.

I wanted to create a place where we are inspired to state our dreams out loud and encouraged to move fully into them through the coaching and unabashed support of our colleagues.

Girls should make history. And we are.

Everyone is welcome. Please join us on May 10, 2019

• Are you feeling discouraged because your suggestions for improvement aren’t acknowledged?  
• Do you run into barriers when you try to implement change? 
• Are you ready to see your ideas come to light?

Network and Earn 7.5 CEs! 

Keynote presenters include: | See detailed bio information here >>

• Ann Albright, PhD, RD – Director, Division of Diabetes Translation at the CDC
• Tracey Brown MBA, BChE – CEO, American Diabetes Association
• Nicole Johnson, DrPH, MPH, MA – National Director of Mission at JDRF
• Maureen McGrath, MS, PNP-BC, BC-ADM – Associate Clinical Professor, Director, Diabetes Minor, UCSF School of Nursing
• Susan Guzman, PhD – Director of Clinical/Educational Services, Behavioral Diabetes Institute, San Diego
• Edi Matsumoto, FNP, MSN, MFA, CDCES, BC-ADM – Montage Medical Group and Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula
• Theresa Garnero, APRN, BC-ADM, MSN, CDCES – Instructional Designer Specialist, UCSF School of Nursing, Founder, Sweet People Club
• Beverly Thomassian, RN, BC-ADM, MPH, CDCES – Founder, President, Diabetes Education Services

Brochure | Women Leaders in Diabetes Conference

Women Leaders in Diabetes Conference Agenda

 

According to the National Credentialing Board for Diabetes Educators, (NCBDE) the  CDCES® Exam Content Outline will be updated starting July 1^st, 2019.

To celebrate this update, we will be basing our 2019 Questions of the Week on this content outline. (See a snippet of the NCBDE content outline to the left or click on it to see the complete outline.)

Question of the Week – February 5th, 2019

These targeted questions are designed to help assess your knowledge on the topics critical to diabetes educators.

In addition, if you are preparing to take the exam, we strongly encourage you to go through each of these sub-categories and rate your knowledge on a scale of 1-5.  Based on this self-assessment, spend the majority of your study time on the topic areas you are least comfortable with. This approach will help you become familiar with the exam content and to use your limited study time wisely.

Assessment of the Diabetes Continuum – Learning  

For this question in this series, we focus on the Assessment Section, under learning. Here is the question that addresses learning goals and needs of the learner. Good luck!

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Sign up for Diabetes Blog Bytes – we post one daily Blog Byte from Monday to Friday. And of course, Tuesday is our Question of the Week. It’s Informative and FREE!  Sign up below!

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Our neighbors across the pound are leading a new campaign to help teenagers curb their habitual consumption of sugar drinks. They have declared this month to be “Fizz Free February” after shocking statistics were released reporting a 70% increase in teenagers being diagnosed with diabetes in the U.K. in the last four years. In the United States, as of 2017, 30.1 million people are living with diagnosed or undiagnosed diabetes, and about 193,000 people are younger than 20 years.

Celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is joining forces with Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, to ask people to stop drinking fizzy drinks for the month of February. The campaign hopes to break the habitual consumption of sugary drinks particularly within young adults. 

We support Fizz Free February. At Diabetes Education Services, we created the “Joy of Six” campaign to encourage people across America to reconsider their added sugar intake.

Take the pledge to enjoy up to six teaspoons of added sugar per day and increase sugar awareness in our communities. 

 “The heaps of sugar companies are putting in their fizzy drinks are as good as poisoning our kids,” Watson said. “With scores of children suffering from tooth decay, obesity and even diabetes, we must do something to alert people to the danger of too much sugar.”

Sugar soft drinks make up for a large portion of sugar intake in a child’s diet. Not only can this cause Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity, but is known to contribute to tooth decay. 

Fizz Free February launched as a part of a wider campaign to tackle obesity. “Evidence for the damaging effects of sugar is mounting up. We’ve got to find ways to drastically reduce our consumption of sugar, and Fizz Free February is a fantastic way to start.”

Help us continue to spread awareness on this very important issue! We have many resources from our “Joy of Six” campaign for you to share with your community:

• The Joy of Six – Sugar Pledge Banner – We are happy to share our “Joy of Six” banner for you to download and share with your friends and colleagues. 
• The Joy of Six – Sugar Pledge Form, Hidden Sugar Handout, Strategies to Sidestep Sugar  – word doc. – Enjoy all of the “Joy of Six” materials in a word doc. 

We also invite you to test your sugar knowledge:

In order to make sugar awareness fun and educational, Coach Beverly has designed six sugar-related questions to test your knowledge: 

• Sugar Question #1
• Sugar Question #2
• Sugar Question #3
• Sugar Question #4
• Sugar Question #5
• SUPER SUGAR CHALLENGE
• Can You Accurately Guess How Much Sugar Is In These 9 Starbucks Drinks? – Buzzfeed

To learn more: “Consumers urged to give up sugary drinks for Fizz Free February” The Gaurdian

Other important blog posts & resources:

• Limit Diet Sodas and Drinks, Stick to Water Instead
• “Parents Aren’t Always Good Judges of Their Kids’ Sugar Intake”
• Report: Sugar-laden drink consumption on the rise among California kids

 

Announced at the annual meeting of the Science for Neuroscience, research finds even in healthy adults, sleep deprivation can have an effect on anxiety levels and even alter brain activity.

A recent study by Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has determined that a lack of sleep may induce increased levels of anxiety. Also, people who are diagnosed with anxiety typically have difficulty sleeping. This study shows that there is an inverse relationship between anxiety and poor sleep.

The anxiety levels of 18 healthy individuals were examined for the sake of this study. Anxiety tests were conducted for each subject after a full night of sleep and a sleepless night. Those who experience sleep deprivation demonstrated anxiety levels 30% higher than the group of individuals who had a full night sleep. The brain activity of the sleep-deprived individuals changed as well. Subjects seemed to become more emotional in response to videos played in the lab. The prefrontal cortex, the area that reduces anxiety levels, was less active as well according to MRI scans.

The result of the study concluded that lack of sleep can be more than just a symptom of anxiety, but in some cases, a direct cause! 

The new ADA Standards encourage health care professionals to evaluate sleep habits at each visit and help with problem solving to improve sleep quality.

For more information on this topic, visit: A lack of sleep can induce anxiety – Science News, Magazine of the Society for Science & the Public

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The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet studies and results have been groundbreaking and powerful enough to stand on the test of time.

The first DASH study results were published in 1997, As a result of the powerful results, the DASH diet is still the dietary standard for the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology.

The DASH diet recommends a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy, poultry, fish, beans, whole grains, oils and nuts, and limit sweets, sugar-sweetened beverages and red meats. Overly processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages should be avoided or limited. 

The original DASH study began by assessing how blood pressures rises with age. Half of the adults in the United States suffer from high blood pressure, which is a precursor for heart attacks and strokes. 459 adults were split into three different diet groups: a typical American diet, an American diet with extra fruits and vegetables, and a DASH diet (more fruits and vegetables and low-fat dairy).

All food was prepared by the researchers which made the outcomes of this study well-controlled. After a period of eight weeks, the group consuming extra fruits and vegetables greatly reduced their blood pressure. However, the group on the DASH diet demonstrated even better results.

DASH also conducted a study assessing sodium intake. All three diets from the previous study had similar sodium intakes. Researchers on the study were curious to see if reducing sodium intake in the DASH diet and the American diet showed any specific change. 412 individuals were split into high-sodium (3,300 mg), moderate-sodium (2,400 mg), and low-sodium groups (1,500 mg). The participants consuming a lower sodium diet showed a substantial decrease in blood pressure across the board with older adults demonstrating even more drastic results.

Due to these results, DASH decided to conduct one more study on carbohydrate reduction. The goal of this study was to reduce carbohydrate intake and to replace it with unsaturated fats and protein. It adopted the same healthy DASH dietary pattern. This study found even greater results with lowering blood pressure than the original DASH diet. 

All three studies are further confirmation that a diet high in plant foods and lean protein as well as low in sodium is one of the best solutions for lowering blood pressure. The authors are still investigating why these foods make such a significant impact on hypertension.

What is the take home message? Encouraging people with diabetes to eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy, poultry, fish, beans, whole grains, oils and nuts, and limit sweets, sugar-sweetened beverages and red meats and added salt can make a big difference in blood pressure and overall health.

For more information on the DASH diet, visit “5 diet studies that made a difference.”

Contributed by: Sofia Sepulveda

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