After an unprecedented door-to-door survey, the New York City Health Department has released survey data with some shocking news: More than 100,000 New York Adults (or about 1 in 8 adults) have diabetes while nearly twice as many are at a high risk of developing the disease because of a condition called prediabetes (high blood sugar, though not yet diabetic).

What makes this bad situation even worse is the fact that one in three diabetics are not even aware of their condition thus preventing them from taking positive steps to combat the disease and its ugly repercussions including heart disease, amputation and blindness. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city health commissioner, says “This confirms that we as a society are doing a rotten job both preventing and controlling diabetes.”

During November of late last year, in World Diabetes Day: An urgent wake-up call, I wrote about the devastating impact of diabetes especially in India where the population is, unfortunately, genetically susceptible to this disease. In that post I also linked to Modern Ways Open India’s Doors to Diabetes a revealing New York Times article which also talks about this South Asian link to diabetes.

Well, what can change in just 3 months?:

But Dr. Frieden said he was startled by some of the specific findings, including the very high numbers among Asian-Americans, especially those from South Asia. The study indicates that more than half of the New Yorkers whose families are from the Indian subcontinent have either diabetes or prediabetes.

Asians have the highest rates in the city, 16 percent diabetic and 32 percent prediabetic. The city’s report does not differentiate Asians by region, but officials said that the data in their study and others show that East Asians have below-average rates of diabetes, while South Asians have by far the highest of any large group.

-Via New York Times

As I have written before, if there is anything good about type 2 diabetes, it is that it can almost always be prevented with a mixture of a healthful diet and regular exercise.

Once again, let us resolve to spread this message among our peers and prevent this monster from rearing its ugly head in our homes and communities.

-Via Sepia Mutiny

Technorati Tags: health, fitness, nutrition, diabetes, newyork, south_asia, india

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Wellsphere is a community site for wellness that is being launched today with the goal of “Bringing together people, places and things that help you live a healthier, happier life”. A wellsphere is essentially a page where users list their goals and can then find like-minded people who are also working toward achieving similar goals. Users can also comment and give advice on the goals of other people and by doing so create a community of goal-oriented people.

This is very similar to the popular site 43 Things (the original site for goal-oriented-people), the main difference being that Wellsphere is primarily health and fitness oriented whereas 43 Things is more general in nature (want to see a ghost? so do about 300 people!)

To begin using the site, you first create a profile for yourself and then you can either create your own wellsphere (as many as you want) or subscribe to those of others if you find them similar to your individual goals. I went ahead and created a profile for myself to test the site.

As you can see from the screenshot below, after you have given them the basic information about yourself, you have to choose your goals from a select list, which while pretty comprehensive, may or may not have the specific goal you have in mind. The major goals include Eat Healthy, Lose Weight, Reduce Stress, Get Fit, Get Active, Play Sports and Complete an Endurance Event. These, of course, have sub-sections so you can be more specific (like which sport or which endurance event).

Once I had my goals in place, I showed up on the wellspheres page where I could search by Help givers or seekers. That’s me (Fitness M) below!)

The best feature of Wellspheres (and probably it’s Unique Selling Point over 43 Things) is the ability to search for, and connect with, an Activity Partner.

As you can see, you can search for partners on the basis of fields like activity type, skill level, gender, and most importantly area-proximity and then send a message to them to see if they can work with you toward achieving your (typically) common goal. This is an extremely useful feature to have since more and more studies show that people excel at fitness regimens when there is a support group involved. There is also a Local Resources section that lists resources like chiropractors, health clubs, personal trainers and yoga studios in your local area, but currently it only lists San Francisco based centers.

Finally, I wanted to make sure I mention that unlike many of the newer sites which expect you to login and then “figure things out as you go along”, Wellsphere has a comprehensive Help and FAQ section that answers most questions a first-time visitor would have making it that much more likely that the user will stay, contribute and enrich the community rather than shake his head and leave.

Go ahead and check Wellsphere out - there’s probably a health-conscious community right in your area that’s waiting just for you!

- Via TechCrunch

Technorati Tags: health, fitness, wellsphere

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