At the beginning of her college hour on Diabetes in America, presenter Pamela Whipple asked the audience what they think the cause of diabetes is. The audience correctly said sugar.
She also mentioned celebrities such as Tom Hanks and Halle Berry who were affected by the disease.
The college hour discussed the disease itself as well as preventative measures for practice in on your own life.
“There are a lot of people who have diabetes and live a healthy lifestyle,” said Whipple during the presentation.
Whipple then went on to discuss endocrine disorder for type 1 and type 2 diabetes, as well as gestational diabetes, which can occur in pregnant women.
The next part of the slideshow listed the risk factors of diabetes, which were age, lack of exercise, and bacteria.
One of Whipple’s slides explained that during the 20th century, it was discovered that diabetes is caused by a lack of insulin.
Whipple then showed an image of the human pancreas on a slide and talked about how blood sugar helps cells.
“It’s like a key that open cells,” she said, adding that glucose is essential to survival.
Further into the college hour event, Whipple asked the audience to do an exercise in which she threw a beach ball that represented glucose for the audience to catch and toss into a basket, that represented insulin.
Whipple went over the symptoms of diabetes and tests such as the fasting glucose test, glucose tolerance test, and hemoglobin A1C test.
Whipple, who is a nurse, said that one of her priorities is to prevent diabetes.
“I’m a public health nurse, so what I try to do in my work is prevention,” said Whipple on her thoughts on diabetes.
Whipple talked about those at risk for diabetes, which includes those who are over forty-five years of age, and relatives that have diabetes.
According to Whipple, 1 in 3 people, or 86 million people have pre-diabetes, a condition in which a person’s blood sugar is higher than normal, but the person is not yet considered to be diabetic, according to the Mayo clinic website.
She also said that 1 in 4 people, or 29 million Americans have diabetes.
She said those with pre-diabetes can prevent or delay diabetes by 58 percent with regular physical activity.
Kristen Corbin, host of the college hour, formed this college hour to inform the public on the disease.
“I wanted to bring more awareness to the campus about diabetes, because I know there’s a lot of people with (it) here,” she said.
The college hour was attended by around 30 to 40 people. One of those attendees was Sascha Sharp, a botany major.
“(It’s) a disease that I don’t want to end up with. (People should) exercise, and pay attention to their diet,” he said.
ARC’s next college hour, hosted on Dec. 4, will be a preview of the American River Review and it will be the last college hour of the fall 2014 semester.
