 I'm Dr. Kedmodoc, the president of the San Monsha Diabetes and Hypertension Association. Kedma spelled K-E-D-H-M-A-D-O-R-H. The actual day of awareness for diabetes is November 14th. This year it falls on a Tuesday. So although we have one specific day, we like to take the whole month first hours to raise the awareness. Now diabetes is a condition which has been understood to this date as a metabolic and more vascular disease or issue. It affects every single organ in the body from, I mean just name it, everywhere that receives blood or is supplied by your blood has to have blood vessels and therefore diabetes can affect it. The common areas will be your eyes, your heart, your lungs, your kidneys, but every single spot can be affected by diabetes. And that is why we really need to raise awareness, okay? Because the key thing is diabetes touches every single person in the world. You'll notice that on my left shoulder, I'm wearing a blue circle. This circle was designed to bring the concept of unity to unite the entire world on this concept of the fight against diabetes. So a circle to unite everyone and the blue color actually is in support of the UN resolution and the UN flag which is also blue. Some persons describe that it's also representing the blue sky that we all enjoy. So that's the whole idea behind the blue circle. So every diabetes awareness would be from this, well we use this symbol, the blue circle to sorry to raise the awareness of this condition. So throughout the month of November, the association has actually agreed or partnered with the Ministry of Health to bring about several activities that we're hoping to help persons understand, manage, and very ambitious but hopefully eradicate diabetes from our population. Okay, so the association of vision is to be the focal institute in the prevention, management, education, and of course eradication of diabetes and hypertension, but this time around we're speaking only about diabetes. One of our first activities is actually a diabetes quiz. This is an activity supported by the IDF, more specifically the NARC region, North America Caribbean region, IDF stands for International Diabetes Federation. So we've with the Ministry of Education reached out to all of our primary schools and grade five students are standard three, back in my day we call it standard three. So that's about age 10, 9, 10. They've all been given some study materials and just on the weekend we concluded the first round where they went online answered some questions and we're happy to say that we have a little over 50 students who took part and we're looking forward to having the semifinals next week and the finals we're hoping to have it on the actual November 14th. The finals we're looking forward to it being somewhat like our previous school challenges, you know like a school, what do you call it, spelling bee, where persons are asked questions and the last man or last student standing, sorry, the last student standing will be our winner or the champion for this year's diabetes quiz. And we think that is a very important activity because in school we'd have learned back in my time about vitamin C, vitamin D deficiencies and to this day those things are not affecting us as much compared to diabetes. We have conditions or situations such as childhood obesity. These are all precursors or conditions, factors that favor your development of diabetes earlier and later on in life. So we think that it's important that we start as a nation to consider introducing the concept and the impact of what we do and how we do it and how it could lead to diabetes from those tender ages. So the quiz we think will be a nice segue into introducing part of the curriculum to have diabetes-friendly or diabetes-related materials. So that's one. We're also looking forward to having our continuous, what do you call it, awareness talks at different schools, different business places. The association, this has been our long-standing mandate every month and I've said it a few times in the past that we'd like you to challenge us, call the association, book a date with us and we'll come in and have a talk with your school, your business place, whoever it is. We will find, make sure we have a convenient time to come together and share as much information as we have about diabetes and this is absolutely free. You don't have to pay for us to come and do that. So that's something we'll continue to do throughout the month and throughout the year, okay, not just for diabetes awareness but this is something we have as a standing order in the association. But the other activity that we think is a grand one is, well there are two grand ones if I have to be honest, grand one is the health fair that we're looking forward to having in Constitution Park November 30th. It will be a fair with considering everything diabetes. Persons can look forward to coming and understanding some of the things that you traditionally did not associate with diabetes such as a holistic life balance, you know, mental health, how this could actually lead to someone developing diabetes. So we invite in everyone, that means your health is on board, we understand, well now we understand, we know as well that the Senua Taiwan government recently signed MOU on, I think it's non-communicable diseases. They're also part of this activity so you can look forward to getting some material from them where we will be sharing everything on diabetes and how individuals can ensure that they prevent themselves from getting it, those who have it, they can better manage it and those who don't want it or want it out of their life could actually hopefully eradicate it. So that's a health fair we're also looking forward to having a nice fitness exercise at the end and yes I mentioned and no no has it made this year that I will be trying to adopt the lifestyle as a president of the association I have started. The belly's slowly going down, all right, but we'll be there and we'll continue to encourage persons to adopt the lifestyles necessary for the prevention, treatment and management of diabetes. The next activity is moonlight walk, all right, it's no we're not encouraging anywhere, we'll seek a lot. Yeah, but it's a walk with a difference, it's a walk where we encourage persons to come. This year it will be done at November 27th, it's our moonlight walk, it will be, we have one in the north of the island and the other end view for town, so castles town and view for town so everyone can look forward to all the materials on that you register of the association with our long-standing partner Marcy you'll also be able to register there, get your t-shirts and come join us on a moonlight walk where we further erase the awareness of diabetes and there's also this year that the Ministry of Health and the Association is is trying to help persons appreciate better diet or food and comes to diabetes. You know there's so much confusion out there as to okay I'm living with diabetes, I'm trying to prevent diabetes, I don't eat, I don't sweeten my tea, I don't sweeten my juice, I don't take any sugar, all right that's the actual sugar, I don't take any sugar and why did I develop diabetes? Why is my blood sugar still high? So we're trying to help persons understand that this this time around and we we're going to make a deliberate effort to attack that confusion or misconception so again diabetes when you mention sugar we're referring to starch or carbohydrates so there are various forms of carbohydrates we also have persons who say but my parents grandparents they didn't have these conditions as much as today and they used to eat all the provisions they wanted in the world and they're fine yes that may be true to an extent we don't have the data or the evidence to substantiate a lot of those claims that we're making but we also have to recognize that the lifestyle has changed technology has given us the opportunity where I could stay in my house get my water get my electricity get everything I want in fact man the dry fruits is these so almost anything you could think of so persons are less active therefore they don't burn that energy we're taking in the food as much as we fall and we we tend to eat live to eat and not eat to live all right food is meant to give us nutrients to give us energy to give us what we need to survive and not we live in to eat everything in the world or finish all the food around us so the idea is we want to educate persons on the right ways to eat the right foods to eat especially when it comes to portion sizes okay as someone living with diabetes or someone trying to prevent diabetes fact is there's no food that you cannot eat what's really important is how you eat this food so the portion size the frequency at which you eat it so we we're hoping to dispel some of those myths as we embark on this project and I'm excited to say that part of it will include some demonstrations with a well-renowned chef that we have on board chef Orlando okay the plan is to do some demonstrations at our schools and take it a step further so next year our students can look forward to participating in a competition where they create their own menu or their own recipe for healthy or well put together lunch and breakfast so diabetes awareness month everything diabetes making sure persons are clear as to what it is where it came from and the way forward with it and the way forward is we need to get it out okay IDF has actually projected by the year 2030 one in nine persons in the world will be living with diabetes if we don't make a conscious effort right now to do something about it in terms of our local statistics in 2014 2015 I believe WHO the last some reports done on Senusha showed that we have a little over 14 percent prevalence of diabetes in Senusha so we we're looking at a really high number there 14 or a little over 14 out of every hundred persons in Senusha is living with diabetes all right and that's that's a big enough number to take seriously so this November Senusha Diabetes Hypertension Association along with the Ministry of Health and other partners we will be bringing to the Senushan population diabetes and what we can and what we should be doing about it there's a slogan that IDF International use around the world and this year is know your risk know your response and that's what we spoke to our diet our our size physical activity these are some of the risks and of course we need to know all of the risks and we need to know what we can do about them so this will be our approach for this year's awareness month we continue to get persons who are looking forward to working with us and doing more because as I said as we've known as we know and as we've recognized globally diabetes affects every single individual in this world a few years ago you used to think that oh that's something for the older folk or that's somebody far away you heard might have had it but now I am sure everyone knows at least either a friend or relative who has been affected by diabetes so we have a lot of persons who want to get on board with this fight against diabetes and they continue to reach out to us we don't turn back anyone or any activity as long as it's for the cause we'll be on board and we'll be pushing it okay so we've partnered with officially Massey, Massey stores that company we've partnered with the Ministry of Health all right we've partnered with the San Ushua Taiwan project on health we've partnered with San Ushua hospitality and tourism association every single person that you could think of we with this year embarked on a campaign where we literally sent out correspondences letters to every single business place and we're still doing that because eventually we want to partner with the entire island all right everybody is this is everybody's business if we don't treat it that way we'll not have the desired effect on diabetes in San Ushua so we're partnering with everybody so everybody needs to get on board and we'll be coming to everybody to get through with this message so for people who don't have diabetes you want to prevent yourself from getting it firstly you must know your risk go to your doctor find out um if you are at risk of getting diabetes and in so doing you must ensure that you are preventing yourself from getting it because um what you put in your body is your physical your your lifestyle will determine whether you get diabetes or not so number one you want to be physically active you want to ensure that you are exercising at least three times for the week at least 30 minutes for the day and you want to ensure that you your your diet has fruits vegetables peas and beans your legumes which is like your sorry your peas and beans are your legumes your nuts your seeds some of those healthy foods that we are lacking in our diet you want to ensure that the foods that you are consuming like alcohol cut back on it because alcohol is a risk factor and you want to ensure that processed foods eat less of processed foods your foods should be whole wholesome foods your provisions your peas and beans your fruits your vegetables drink adequate water and most importantly even if you are eating healthy foods the portion the amount of food that you put on your plate is critical with solutions we eat too much our plates are high in carbohydrate foods lots of meats and very little on vegetables and peas and so we want to we want persons to consume more of the fruits the vegetables your green leafy vegetables your orange vegetables you know the colorful foods foods but um processed foods are high in sugar high in fat high in salt and these are risk factors for diabetes so these are the key things that somebody who does not have diabetes should should practice it's like um you know just to give some some guidance you know you have your plate maybe an eight inch plate around the perimeter of the plate in eight inches and so you want at least quarter of that plate can have your provisions your provisions or or your greens or whatever it is that you are having and and the meat portion should be about quarter as well and the other half either you put a quarter of peas and vegetables or you have half with your vegetables whether it is steam or or um raw or steam and raw you can do either or but it's actually very healthy to have some raw vegetables yeah so that's like a little guidance as to you know how to portion your food without having to count the same the same rules would adhere to the same rules would be for whether you have it or don't have it but with persons who already have it would need to be more strict and in so doing you have to be careful um the type of food that you consume and also the quantity so we know that um blood sugar usually gets raised by carbohydrate foods whether it's carbohydrate carbohydrate we mean starch starch foods and sugar these are two that mix the carbohydrates so foods that that you know that have our carbohydrates our provisions rice beans have carbohydrates as well so even if a food is healthy for you you still have to watch the amount that you have for example pumpkin is a very healthy food carrots are healthy and they are vegetables but that doesn't mean you could have any amounts we have some of the vegetables that you that we call free vegetables like the green if you vegetables you can have more of those but the others like carrots and pumpkin and those others tend to have some starch in them and so you want to ensure that you have him you know that your portion is is controlled and I also like to encourage persons to go to the health center and to see a nutritionist or nutrition officer who will give them guidance as to how to eat if you have diabetes because they will need the help they will need the guidance and so if you are not on the right path you'll be able to get some assistance with that the spacing of their meals the timing of their meals the quantity of food that they consume are all important the amount of water that they need to drink and um you know and also the physical activity you know so all of these things have to be taken into consideration to ensure that they are doing the right thing labeling yes reading your labels is very important and it is one of the things that we need to to to teach people how to do because it's not so it can be a bit difficult but once you thought it's very easy so they need to know you know what to look for on the on the label now I know I spoke about sugar but also your type of fat is important a diet that is high in fat especially saturated fat will increase the risk of somebody getting diabetes or also will increase um the chances of somebody with diabetes getting other health conditions like heart disease etc so you know you want to have lower fat you want to consume lower fat foods fatty foods and also foods that are low in cholesterol and especially the saturated fats gets converted into cholesterol in in our bodies so you want to um have less of the the meats the fatty meats and consume more of leaner meats fish and sometimes you can have vegetarian meals we don't need to always have meat on our plates we need to move away from that that way of thinking also the way the food is prepared you know if the food is fried of course it's going to be it's going to have more more fat content and so you want to ensure that you have more um grilled foods boiled and baked in in comparison to having instead of having them you know fried foods