PROGRAM

Basically we are eating the wrong food by starving our bodies of the nutrition we need which is the root cause of our health problems resulting in poor health. By causing poor health, low levels of energy, and even mental impairment, hunger can lead to even greater poverty by reducing people's ability to work and learn, thus leading to even greater hunger.

In order to prove our pilot project’s efficacy a trial model project is created within the Polynesian Community that will target twenty people per trial site. Over a period of six to eight weeks participants will be given:

• Blood Sugar and Body Mass Index evaluation establishing a clinical baseline

• Dietary Modification to better manage nutritional and caloric intake

• Physical Exercise designed for each participant’s weight management

• Counseling and Education to encourage sustainability

• Follow-up Monitoring tracking participants’ post program outcome

Our trial project looks to address three key conditions:

1. Blood Sugar / Glucose Management

Employing a natural whole foods diet, this project looks to stabilize erratic spikes and drops in blood sugar levels. Focusing on complex sugars and carbohydrates participants will realize higher levels of energy from the fiber, mineral and vitamin content of these types of food found in vegetables, whole-meal bread and cereals. Examples of foods that contain complex carbohydrates include spinach, yams, broccoli, beans, zucchini, lentils, skimmed milk, whole grains and many other leguminous plants and vegetables.

2. Weight Control

Participants may consider exercise a nuisance, a chore, or simply a bore. But if they’ve been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, they will look at physical activity in a whole new light. Exercise is a tool and a necessary component to our pilot project program. We understand that exercise can lower blood sugar on its own, even if a participant doesn’t lose weight.

"Exercising is the most underused treatment and it's so, so powerful," said Sharon Movsas, RD, a diabetes nutrition specialist at the Clinical Diabetes Center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.

3. Insulin Management / Metabolic Disturbances

Increasingly, physical disorders such as obesity, hyper-lipidemias, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes mellitus are becoming recognized as significant comorbidities in people with serious mental illnesses, including psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. Whether these disorders are part of the disease process itself through increased stress and inflammatory responses, genetic vulnerabilities, or environmental factors versus sequelae of treatment of the disease has been a matter of debate. Only recently have clinicians and researchers in the field of psychiatry begun to evaluate these comorbidities in the context of the metabolic syndrome.

For native people our fragile diminishing natural environment is increasingly becoming more of a critical issue. Having a natural setting where cultural practices can be played out in concert with natural diet and exercise is being considered an integral part of the holistic approach to natural healing.

Since native people are typically viewed from a lens foreign to our indigenous perspective, mental health issues are rarely considered. What we do collectively understand is that the connection between metabolic disturbances and neuropsychiatric disorders has been strengthen by recent and ongoing human clinical studies which document numerous and complex interactions between metabolism and the brain. For example, individuals with depression have approximately 60% higher risks of developing type 2 diabetes are at an elevated risk of developing depression. Metabolic disturbances are also reported to be two to four times higher in people with schizophrenia and patients prescribed psychotropic medication, such as antipsychotic and antidepressant, often experience disturbances in metabolic parameters including high blood sugar, impaired glucose tolerance and type 2 diabetes.

Metabolic disturbances have also been implicated in neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Multiple clinical observations have demonstrated that dementia in general and Alzheimer’s disease in particular are associated with type 2 diabetes and obesity. Moreover, type 2 diabetes is considered an independent risk factor for dementia with the prevalence of dementia in diabetic populations doubles that of healthy patient populations. Additional clinical observations have shown that prevalence rates for type 2 diabetes and insulin abnormalities are approximately 7-fold higher in patients with Huntington’s disease when compared to healthy controls and impaired glucose tolerance affects up to 80% of Parkinson’s patients.

Taken together, clinical studies provide ample evidence supporting an overlap between metabolic disturbances and neuropsychiatric disorders. The question now is: What links the two? Published data suggest that an imbalance in brain function and metabolic status share underlying pathophysiological mechanism and common intracellular signaling molecules. If true then this project looks to further investigate these underlying pathways which could serve as novel therapies for both types of disorders.