All welcome at diabetes hui

[Northerner]

Arowhenua Health Clinic nurse Maree Rowley knows that diabetes is a disease that steals quality of life.

She also knows that educating people is key to understanding, and understanding is key to improving health.

That is why the health clinic is holding a hui on the subject, and everyone is invited - Maori and non-Maori, people with or without diabetes, young and old.

Mrs Rowley said diabetes is a **lifestyle disease.

"Smoking, not exercising, diet, weight, age, ethnicity are all contributing factors," she said.

"Until I started studying my post-graduate certificate in diabetes I didn't realise it is such a huge disease.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/news/communities/8962320/All-welcome-at-diabetes-hui

**I do wish they wouldn't use that term, and she shouldn't be using it in one breath and then saying age and ethncity are factors - hardly 'lifestyle' elements that can be controlled...

 

[Copepod]

Great to see term "hui" used again (it means a gathering, whether for social or democracy reasons) - haven't read it since I worked in Kaikoura (which means "meal of crayfish") in 1995/6.

To be fair, 4 of the 6 factors listed (smoking, not exercising, diet, weight) are lifestyle issues, with 2 (age and ethnicity) being out of a person's control. The genetically inherited factors that make a person more prone to getting type 2 diabetes in the modern world of easy access to food and lack of need to be active, are the same factors that enabled people to survive in times when food supply was less predictable. In the case of Maori people, genes that enabled them to survive long voyages between Pacific Ocean islands are what enabled some people on some boats to survive to reach New Zealand / Aotearoa around 1000 CE / AD.