Diabetes is a disease that occurs when your
blood glucose, also known as blood sugar, is chronically high. Blood glucose is
your main source of energy and comes from the food you eat. Insulin, a hormone
made by the pancreas, helps glucose from food get into your cells to be used
for energy. Sometimes your body doesn’t make enough — or any — insulin or
doesn’t use insulin well. Glucose then stays in your blood and doesn’t reach
your cells.
Over time, having too much glucose in your
blood can cause health problems. Although diabetes has no cure, you can take
steps to manage your diabetes and stay healthy.
Calling All Types: Eat Well And Move
No matter if you live with what type of
diabetes you may have, diet and exercise are two of the most powerful tools you
can use to fight it. Not only do they help you control your blood sugar, but
they can mean the difference between feeling run down and feeling great.
New diets can feel restrictive and there is
no one-size-fits-all diet. While you need to make changes in what and how much
you eat, there are numerous resources available in the community and online.
Always remember to follow USDA recommended MyPlate guidelines for healthy food
choices.
• Eat
a variety of foods, including vegetables, whole grains, fruits, non-fat dairy
foods, healthy fats, and lean meats or meat substitutes.
• Try
not to eat too much food.
• Try
not to eat too much of one type of food.
• Space
your meals evenly throughout the day.
• Avoid
skipping meals.
Another part of living a full and healthy
life with diabetes is being active. No matter what you do or how you approach
it, know that any type of physical activity helps lower your blood sugar. Other
benefits of physical activity include:
• Having
more energy
• Relieving
stress
• Keeping
your joints flexible
• Lowering
your risk for heart disease and stroke
If you’re not into regular exercise,
putting together an exercise plan can be a bummer.
But remember, along with your diet and
medications, regular physical activity is an important part of managing
diabetes or dealing with prediabetes. It doesn’t matter where you are
physically. If you’ve never set foot in a gym, that’s okay — as long as you
start doing something now. If you haven’t been very active or are worried about
your health, it’s important to consult your doctor and start slowly.
Did You Know?
More than 84 million adults in the U.S.
have prediabetes — that’s 1 out of every 3 Americans!
Yet, 9 out of 10 people don’t even know
they have it — the YMCA and Glendale Sports Center can help!
The YMCA’s Diabetes Prevention Program is
part of the CDC-led National Diabetes Prevention Program, which has proven that
through healthier eating, increased physical activity, and a small amount of
weight loss, it’s possible to prevent or delay the onset of Type 2 Diabetes by
58-71%.
Through this Y program, participants meet
regularly with a certified lifestyle coach to learn about:
• Nutrition
• Physical
activity
• Overcoming
stress
• Staying
motivated
Together, they get the resources and
support they need to meet program goals:
• Decrease
body weight by 7%
• Increase
physical activity to 150 minutes per week
• Improve
wellness and reduce diabetes risk
Take action now to transform your health.
To learn more, contact me at the Glendale Sports Center, 303-639-4711.
Justin is the Lifestyle Medicine Coordinator at the Glendale Sports Center managed by the YMCA of Metro Denver. He has worked in the fitness industry since 2015 and received his BS and MS in Exercise Physiology from Western Kentucky University. He joined the Denver YMCA in 2019 after moving from Bowling Green, KY.
Ahhh, turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie!
This month marks a few key holidays like Veterans Day and of course
Thanksgiving. It’s also the month for yearly elections plus voting for
President every four years. But there’s more to the month than elections and
holidays, November is also known as the best movie month of the year.
Turkey Day is one of our most cherished
holidays. Between spending time with family and friends, eating delicious food
and shameless naps, there’s so much to love.
Here is our cuddling, comfort food, family
and friend choices for shopping, dining and entertainment to keep cozy fires
a-burning so hearths never grow cold:
3 Beyond
the bounty of food and football, kick Thanksgiving off by seeing Curious
Theatre’s production of The Thanksgiving Play, Oct. 31, 7:30 p.m. It’s a
wickedly funny parody. Information: 303-623-0524.
3 Attend
Anti-Defamation League’s Torch of Liberty Dinner honoring the Chotin family at
the Seawell, Nov. 6, 6 p.m. Information: 303-830-7171.
3 See
season’s latest fashions at National Jewish Health Fashion Show at Mercedes
Benz of Denver, Nov. 7, 6 p.m. Information: 303-728-6546.
3 Support
VOA’s Service With Style Luncheon being held at the Halcyon Hotel in Cherry
Creek, Nov. 15, 11 a.m. Information: 303-297-0408.
3 Make
Thanksgiving easier and better with reservations at the Monaco Inn Restaurant.
Enjoy family and friends while relishing turkey or a half-dozen other choices
12-6-p.m. Information: 303-320-1104.
3 See
the surprising splendor of urban scenes this holiday season at the Robert
Anderson Gallery, Nov. 6-Dec. 31. The images can also be seen at the Artist
Reception Nov. 8, 5-8 p.m. Information: 303-257-0648.
3 Enjoy
the superb jaw-dropping talent, choreography of World of Dance Live at the
Bellco Theatre, Nov. 18, 8 p.m. Information: 303-228-8260.
3 Attend
Women With A Cause’s gala “We Are Thankful” fundraiser at the Four Seasons
Denver Nov. 23, 6 p.m. Information: 303-675-0405.
3 Get
into the holiday spirit by attending this year’s L’Esprit de Noel, Nov. 21-23.
This is Central City Opera Guilds’ 43rd year hosting the home tour. The tour is
in the architecturally diverse University Park neighborhood near the DU campus.
Florists-table designers decorated the homes to give you new ideas for your
home. Funds support Central City Opera programs. Hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Information: 303-292-6500.
Now that the autumn is nearly over and
winter is kicking in with its cold weather and snowy landscapes, people tend to
feel peculiar. You’re either cold or getting a cold. November is a whole bunch
of mixed feelings. The Valley’s weather is often mild and beautiful,
nonetheless, the month comes with its dreariness and loneliness.
The 45th of November will never come nor
the clock strike 26:10, but fear not the month’s challenges bold, we’ve books
and friends and hearths that never grow cold.
It’s easy to get caught up in the plentiful
food and movie marathons, but Thanksgiving is really about giving thanks.
Despite lacking a musical repertoire, holiday music soothes tensions, brings us
together. With rock tunes like Groovy Gravy and Jive Turkey, do you know what
music Pilgrims preferred? Plymouth Rock.
—
Glen Richardson
The Valley Gadfly can be reached at
newspaper@glendalecherrycreek.com.
In volumes of history where we read about
the creating of the West, in the myth of the West one military officer always
stands out — George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. As
we now jump ahead in time, we find ourselves with an even more disastrous
general, Attorney GENERAL Phil, aka Bud-Weiser. Known now as the “Budweiser of
the West.”
So, let me take you back in time. Most of
you have this memory when the City Council of Denver voted 12-1 to bring in
heroin injections, the so-called supervised drug site. And we know the
dissenting vote was Kevin Flynn. The only Council member who even claimed that
he went to see Vancouver, where heroin injections are alive today, was Albus
Brooks, aka flying Abdul. He goes on to be defeated in the last City Council
election by a Marxist. Backed, of course, by Denver’s Mayor Michael Hancock who
was 100 percent behind bringing in injection sites.
Along with my crack colleagues at 710 KNUS
and this newspaper we really did a deep dive on who was behind all of this back
to the George Soros people, the fools in the media, led by Kyle Clark of
Channel 9 fame, who really attempted to bring this insanity to the state of
Colorado.
Now, on the first Wednesday in October, an
Obama-appointed judge in Philadelphia, U.S. District Judge Gerald A. McHugh,
made an allowance that, believe it or not, injection sites don’t violate
federal drug laws because the drug laws in the ’80s didn’t talk about medical
help and injection sites. Which is like looking at ’80s rotary phones and
saying we can’t use cell phones.
The monsters at our doorstep are right out
of Stephen King novels. These people are like 1930s vampire movies where each
time you think the vampire is dead a couple of stooges in a black and white
film set in the fog wander into the crypt and pull the stake out of Lugosi’s
heart. Isn’t it interesting he was always wearing opera clothes and came
immediately back to life and we have vampires again.
This same General Bud-Weiser is suing
pharmaceutical manufacturers because of the damage done by opioids. They want
to go after physicians for writing prescriptions for people in pain as they
over medicate them. So, we sue these people and yet Weiser has become a friend
of the court and they’re bringing heroin injection back.
This is the same City that voted
unanimously in October to raise the purchasing age to 21 and wants to license
retailers on tobacco and vaping. They actually use little minors as narcs to
narc out mom and pops who would dare not check the ID of a 20-year-old back
from Afghanistan to buy a pack of cigarettes.
And I leave you with this because there
will be more on radio and here. Sesame Street designed for 3- and 4-year-old
kids now has an opioid addict, a little kid puppet. Don’t kids have enough to
worry about, knowing the world will end in 12 years, and now have to go to mom
and say, “Mommy do you have a problem with opioids?”
Well I have something for you to worry
about — these bastards are coming back and we will meet them at the bridge. Hey
General, wait ’til you meet these Indians.
The Denver City Council’s agent of change and de facto
leader Candi CdeBaca is planning to have the City Council pass a bill to change
the City Charter to allow Denver voters to elect the city’s Sheriff as is the
case almost everywhere else in Colorado. Given the disaster the Sheriff’s
Department has become, the voters could not do worse than Hancock’s picks over
the last nine years. Even the union representing the Sheriff deputies believes
that such a reform is long past due.
It is difficult to catalog all of the scandals that have
befallen the office over the last few years, starting with the death of
mentally ill Michael Lee Marshall while in custody. The lawsuits alone have
cost the taxpayers a staggering amount of money, including the most recent $1.55 million
settlement paid to 15 female Sheriff deputies for “severe and unwelcome sexual
harassment by male inmates . . . fostered by the failure of the Sheriff’s Department
to take reasonable steps to prevent it.” The next big hit to the taxpayers will
be from the female inmate forced to give birth to a child alone in a Denver
jail cell.
Patrick Firman
Denver Sheriff Patrick Firman resigned effective October 14
after years of mistrust from deputies and community activists, who said that
was the price of filling the position with a man who was never the right person
for the job. “Nice guy, just wasn’t suited to be Sheriff,” said Lisa Calderón,
chief of staff for Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca.
If he were so ill suited for the job, why in the world was
he appointed by Mayor Hancock in 2015 after a long search process? Because it
was a workie, workie like everything else the Mayor does. If you think anything
is going to change as long as the Mayor gets to appoint the Sheriff, you would
be mistaken. For the interim Sheriff, Hancock has appointed a woman, Fran
Gomez, who is even more unqualified than Firman. She was briefly with the
Sheriff’s Department in the 1980s and then after years doing police work in
Aurora and Commerce City she retired. In August of last year she apparently
unretired and got the “no work” job in the Sheriff’s Department as the
“Director of Professional Standards.”
What caused the sudden hiring and incredible rise through
the ranks to the top in a little over a year? According to the Deputy Sheriff’s
union it is due to the fact she is the wife of one of Hancock’s security
detail. Hancock apparently counted on that fact being obscured by the fact she
is the “first” female Denver Sheriff of any sort and has a Hispanic last name.
Almost everyone expects that under Ms. Gomez things will go from bad to even
worse at the jail. This will be followed by the appointment of another gross
incompetent as the permanent Denver Sheriff.
Denver’s citizens really do not have to put up with this
pathetic hiring carousel for the Sheriff position. We should choose the best
candidate for Sheriff ourselves. Voters are not perfect of course, as evidenced
by the fact we have elected Michael Hancock three times. But candidates for the
office will have to at least try to convince us why they would be well-suited
for the job. We can’t do a whole lot worse than choosing as interim Sheriff a
person whose only qualification is that she is the wife of a man on the Mayor’s
security detail.
Fran Gomez
The positions directly below the Sheriff are also presently
political patronage jobs chosen by the Mayor for all of the wrong reasons. An
elected Sheriff could at least pick individuals he/she believes are best suited
to help do what is a very hard job, rather than simply to people whom a Mayor
owes a favor.
Having an elected Sheriff is only the beginning of the
process to provide some checks and balances in the City Charter over present
and future corrupt and out-of-control Mayors.
Lord Acton famously stated: “Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
It is time in Denver for a little less absolute power and a
lot less public corruption.
