This is from an email newslet­ter I received from Dave Joffe, Editor-in-Chief at Dia­betes In Control.com.  It is eye-opening because too many peo­ple have old and/or erro­neous beliefs about diabetes.

Last week we had a com­men­tary from one of our fea­ture writ­ers, Sheri Col­berg, Ph.D., FACSM, on the pro­gram with Dr. Mehmet Oz and Oprah Win­frey about dia­betes. At first I thought that it would blow over and patients would for­get what they had heard, but this week in a class I was teach­ing, the infor­ma­tion again reared its ugly head. As I was dis­cussing car­bo­hy­drates and the per­ils of “sugar free food” an older woman inter­rupted me. She said that I was wrong because she had seen a show on dia­betes on Oprah and “sugar caused dia­betes and if she stopped eat­ing it her dia­betes would go away.” Before I could say a word two other patients chimed in and told me I was wast­ing their time because accord­ing to Dr. Oz once you have dia­betes you are doomed.

Many of you wrote to me about your expe­ri­ences with patients after the show. Theresa Gar­nero, APRN, BC-ADM, MSN, CDE, the author of “Your First Year With Dia­betes: What to Do, Month by Month” which won the 2009 National Health Infor­ma­tion Sil­ver Award has taken these com­ments and put them together for you to read and be ready to react to. Check it out by read­ing “Oprah’s Out­pour­ing: A Bit­ter­sweet Com­men­tary on Responses to Her Dia­betes Show.”

Here is the article:

Oprah’s Out­pour­ing: A Bit­ter­sweet Com­men­tary on Responses to Her Dia­betes Show

Theresa Gar­nero, APRN, BC-ADM, MSN, CDE

On Jan­u­ary 6, 2010, an Oprah pro­ducer con­sulted me about the upcom­ing show on dia­betes. It was a thrill, but when I learned the show’s premise (using com­pli­ca­tions caused by uncon­trolled dia­betes to moti­vate peo­ple into action), I sug­gested adding bal­ance to the pro­gram by show­cas­ing the dia­betes care team and self-care behav­iors so view­ers would be left with tools and hope. Okay, so I didn’t make the panel!

In shar­ing the inside scoop of the upcom­ing show with col­leagues and our patient pop­u­la­tion at the Cen­ter for Dia­betes Ser­vices at Cal­i­for­nia Pacific Med­ical Cen­ter in San Fran­cisco, I never imag­ined it would strike such a chord nor the response of over 100 emails.
In a word? Bit­ter­sweet — with the accent on the first syl­la­ble.
At least she started the con­ver­sa­tion. Here’s a snap shot of some of the com­men­tary and conversations.

From dia­betes care professionals:

* I liked it. It was one of the first shows that allowed us to “see” dia­betes.
* Con­sider a follow-up show that illus­trates a more pos­i­tive side of dia­betes man­age­ment, tells another story — com­pli­ca­tions can be pre­vented with the help of a team, edu­ca­tion and sup­port.
* A client emailed me say­ing she watched Dr. Oz and is now afraid if she eats any­thing with carbs she is going to lose limbs. I am won­der­ing how many more emails I will be respond­ing to to calm peo­ple down!
* I think they had a very spe­cific pur­pose in mind — to wake up the African Amer­i­can com­mu­nity, who are liv­ing with “res­ig­na­tion” that they will develop dia­betes.
* One thumb up, one thumb down.
* If this was about aware­ness, then men­tion those with a high preva­lence rates (Asians/Pacific Islanders/Native Amer­i­cans) and use the ADA cri­te­ria for screen­ing, not just tell those with symp­toms to get tested as so many peo­ple don’t have symp­toms. Then what? See a CDE!
* The con­de­scend­ing tone, blam­ing patients, threat­en­ing insulin is so yes­ter­year and set our pro­fes­sion back decades.
* Con­stantly say­ing “Ooh, you’re going to have a heart attack” may scare us into action for a while, but it is not a foun­da­tion for last­ing change. I would be far more moti­vated by a pos­i­tive mes­sage of “this is what you can do” and by some under­stand­ing of the emo­tional real­ity of liv­ing with it.
* I’m so dis­ap­pointed that she chose not to inter­view true spe­cial­ists in dia­betes on the show. I’m still pissed about it.
* I was very dis­ap­pointed that they did not include CDE’s but focused on “threats of death, fear, etc.” She made an F grade on this show. Dr. Oz has turned into a show­man — the physi­cian was fear-mongering. Sad!
* Terms used by Dr. Oz show his igno­rance (sev­eral ref­er­ences to war in the body — imag­ine wak­ing up every morn­ing in a Civil War!). Please, do jus­tice. Do a part 2. Show the pos­i­tive.
* Sugar, sugar, sugar — not one push for veg­gies!
* Your mes­sage has opened up a lot of dis­cus­sion.
* If they wanted to save lives, talk about endocri­nol­o­gists and dia­betes edu­ca­tors!
* I had a for­mer patient called me in tears due to the ampu­ta­tion shown.
* The Oprah show missed the boat. The infor­ma­tion I took from the show is that all you need to do is avoid eat­ing any­thing white, splash a lit­tle vine­gar on every­thing, and dia­betes and obe­sity are cured. I felt a lot of blame placed on patients.
* Scar­ing peo­ple into good behav­ior is so mis­guided. If Oprah wants to open a can of worms and scare the coun­try into good behav­ior then make it accu­rate. To tell half the story and frighten peo­ple like that — doesn’t excuse Oprah for doing a half hack job. It was a cheap car­ni­val scare tac­tic. I was really dis­ap­pointed and frankly angry, espe­cially at the ampu­ta­tion sec­tion. It brought back hor­rific images when I was 9, “If you’re a good girl, this won’t hap­pen to you.“
* It man­aged to momen­tar­ily revive all my own fears about get­ting dia­betic com­pli­ca­tions. I tried to give all that up decades ago. If her show did that to me (and I wrote the book on liv­ing long and well with dia­betes), imag­ine what it did to oth­ers emo­tion­ally.… I just don’t think that is the best way to moti­vate peo­ple to take bet­ter care of their dia­betes. I do like the increased aware­ness, but I’m not sure how long that will last.
* It will be nice to see an hon­est show about what it is REALLY like to have this dis­ease. I’m tired of hear­ing about all these so-called peo­ple in the world “liv­ing well” with dia­betes, when most of us are strug­gling to moti­vate our­selves to keep doing what we need to year after year. She should talk about the depres­sion and exhaus­tion that goes with this dis­ease. It’s like being on a con­stant biggest loser pro­gram for 20, 30, 50 years. You just do not feel well unless you exer­cise like a farm ani­mal EVERY day. It’s a HASSLE.
* Scare tac­tics don’t work! Real sto­ries from real peo­ple do.
* Typ­i­cal MD per­spec­tive did not go into the fact that it is food — not just sugar that you need to account for in the Dia­betic Diet.
* I am really scared. Maybe I should stop all carbs or I’ll lose my legs.
* Show peo­ple that it is man­age­able and you can live a per­fectly nor­mal life.
* The rhyth­mic swoosh­ing sound of the dial­y­sis machine sure made for great TV!

Yes, Oprah started the dia­logue. Hope­fully she will con­tinue it with accu­rate mes­sages, show peo­ple with dia­betes liv­ing healthy lives as a way to inspire oth­ers, give view­ers action­able and research-based steps they can take — not only to pre­vent Type 2 for the many at risk indi­vid­u­als — but how to con­trol it, no mat­ter the type.

Please con­tinue the con­ver­sa­tion. That would be sweet.

Theresa Gar­nero, APRN, BC-ADM, MSN, CDE wrote and illus­trated the inno­v­a­tive, three-time nation­ally award-winning book pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Dia­betes Asso­ci­a­tion, “Your First Year With Dia­betes: What to Do, Month by Month. This book helps both the newly diag­nosed and those who wish to revamp their self-management game plan.This book is packed with sci­ence in an easy-to-follow, inter­ac­tive for­mat, and Gar­nero uses a moti­va­tional “can do” approach along­side the visual icons she cre­ated to nav­i­gate through a year’s worth of self-care behaviors.

The Dia­betes Book That Could Save Your Life!