Teresa Ambroz
speaker
57 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2024
last heard Mar 2024
Teresa Ambroz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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So thanks for having us. We're really excited to be here talking to Stan and Clarence and Barry. So when you think about diabetes, a lot of times people think of type 1 diabetes, which isn't what we're focusing on here, which is a condition that you know, has complex origins, but type two diabetes used to be referred to as adult onset diabetes.
So when I started my career many years ago, you just, we called it adult onset diabetes. And then I started seeing children in a clinic that I was working in, children with severe obesity, starting to be diagnosed with type two or adult onset diabetes. And it was really, really concerning. This is a type of diabetes that is considered largely preventable.
And it has multiple factors that contribute to it. It's a very complex condition, but it is related to how our lifestyles, cultures have shifted, at least partially. And that's a type of diabetes that we want to talk about and how we can work to prevent it.
We'll leave that question to Dr. Baines.
So when we think about prevention of childhood obesity, we start thinking about gestation and what pregnant women are doing because There is something called gestational diabetes, which means the woman's blood sugar is above a healthy level temporarily during their pregnancy, which can affect the infant in utero.
And that can contribute to higher risks of diabetes for that child after they're born. And after that, you know, really focusing on encouraging breastfeeding, which is also associated with health, better health for the infant and mother. and reducing risks for future diabetes. Dr. Baines, do you want to add anything?
That is an excellent question. So we really need to focus at both the prevention level as early as possible. And then, you know, the higher risk level of treatments and interventions for folks with prediabetes, children and adults with prediabetes. But what we know is that the earlier we can prevent obesity, the more likely we are to achieve good health.
It's really hard to reverse obesity when you already have it. And investing in prevention early in childhood is really the game changer for making a difference. I've heard one National Institute of Health leader, expert in the field, say if he had all the money in the world, he'd invest in prevention of childhood obesity.
But the game changer, like for our diabetes program at the state, we are funded through the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and they define the areas of work that we are paid to focus on. So until this last grant opportunity, we didn't have resources allocated to focus on childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes prevention in children.
So we were thrilled to see that it was added, and we're thrilled to be working on it. Julie, do you want to add?
Yeah, that's a great question. So I've had this bird's eye view as my career has been long. And you know, when I started my career in the mid 1980s, childhood obesity just started to escalate, like obesity rates just started to climb after 1980 dramatically. And type two diabetes tends to follow about 10 years behind at a population level.
So when people are talking about these small increases in the last 10 or 20 years, we start to think that it's just inevitable that Type 2 diabetes is inevitable and 40% of people are going to have it in their lifetime. And people are going to live shorter lives than their parents. And we start to accept these to be inevitable.
And it's not because we know that in the 1970s, four times less kids, less people had diabetes, type 2 diabetes. So, and obesity. So we can reverse these trends and to the cause it's really complicated because there is a genetic component, but there's really an environmental component that kind of makes it harder for some people not to gain weight.
We have what we has often been referred to as a toxic environment that contributes to obesity. So if people who kind of, you know, grew up in those areas and can think about the differences, you know,
advertising and marketing and screen time and our food environment um that let's just share i'm sure everybody's got really great examples of what they've seen barry we see yeah so yeah i wanted to you know i'm just trying to think back you know what what had started to change
Yeah, Health Affairs has run articles about some of these things. So one of the big players have been big changes that we've seen results with are changes in the WIC food packages. where instead of giving kids fruit juice, you're giving them whole fruits, for example. So the quality of the food and less processed foods, ultra processed foods are a huge factor.
Sugary beverages have dramatically increased in consumption overall, and the trends are pretty parallel, and they're associated with increased rates of type two diabetes and cardiovascular disease and cavities.
And so sugary drinks, you know, include things like sports drinks and lemonade and Kool-Aid, you know, these flavored waters that have even artificial sweeteners are associated with metabolic conditions. So trying to encourage consumption of water and milk, low fat milk for children and adults, um, no sugary beverages are recommended before age five.
And even if kids are going to consume them, you know, occasionally one eight ounce drink a week, like people are consuming far, far too much sugar. And that can make a big difference because when you consume sugary drinks, it doesn't satiate your hunger. You still feel hungry and you can eat a lot of food. So that is a huge change people could make. And some,
Approaches to that are reducing access, right? Having policies in schools and childcare centers and sports teams so that those aren't available and water is.
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