Moving, grooving and eating right to stop diabetes

Moving, grooving and eating right to stop diabetes. Registered Dietitian Maila Halenko, left, and Live Free ... Prevent Diabetes (LFPD) program participant Geeta Pawankumar preparing a healthy dessert choice in session 4 of the LFPD Back on Track Workshop series. Photo/COURTESY

But there's a good chance she can get them up dancing to a reggae tune or moving and grooving to Latin music.

"Small lifestyle choices can have a huge impact," said Hylton, a community outreach worker with North York's New Heights Community Health Centres, which is running a diabetes prevention pilot project.

Live Free...Prevent Diabetes, operated by Hylton and dieticians Dani Renouf and Maila Halenko, is aimed at reducing the onset of Type 2 diabetes primarily in Toronto's Caribbean and Latin American communities.

Both communities have a higher than average risk of contracting diabetes, which is related to obesity and lack of exercise and has also been linked to hereditary factors.

The disease can lead to damage of many of the body's organs, blindness, heart disease, reduced blood flow to the limbs resulting in amputation, nerve damage and stroke.

Once contracted, it is rarely reversible but can be managed.

Live Free...Prevent Diabetes is Toronto's only diabetes prevention program carried out mostly in the community, Hylton said.

Instead of asking clients to come to New Heights, which has centres near Allen Road and Lawrence Avenue and on Bathurst Street south of Steeles Avenue, New Heights goes to community centres, churches, shopping centres and other neighbourhood settings.

Clients are first asked to complete a survey known as the Canrisk questionnaire, a made-in-Canada test that assesses people's risk of developing diabetes.

Based on the scores, clients are referred to community resources and/or the Live Free...Prevent Diabetes' healthy lifestyle program.

The program, known as Back on Track, features four workshops.

The first provides information about diabetes and helps clients set realistic goals to prevent getting the disease.

The second workshop focuses on nutrition.

The third is a cooking class that concentrates on dishes enjoyed by members of the Caribbean and Latin American communities.

The fourth focuses on exercise, again concentrating on activities that appeal to the target communities. While those clients aren't likely to take up jogging or running marathons, they do enjoy the workshop's reggae dancing and "Latin moves and grooves" class, Hylton said.

She admitted it's no easy task convincing clients to join the program.

"It is not easy, I can be frank with you. It is not easy to recruit people just to be screened," Hylton laughed.

But once clients learn how little changes - for example, switching cooking oil to canola oil for flying and olive oil for roasting vegetables, eating a sliver of avocado rather than a much larger portion, eating less rice and finding ways to get active - they are often receptive.

So far, Live Free...Prevent Diabetes has screened 230 people. About 100 of those have participated in the workshops.

Hylton said she hopes the program will be able to offer one-on-one counselling in the future.

For more information, call Hylton at 416-787-1661, ext. 360.