Most people love surprises – but not all of them are the good kind. For example: One in three Americans are walking around with undiagnosed pre-diabetes and don’t even know it until their doctor clues them in.
That being the case, and with November being Diabetes Awareness Month, St. Tammany Health System Diabetes Educator Kelli Braud paid a visit Thursday (Nov. 4) to The Lake 94.7 FM studios to speak with host Charles Dowdy about diabetes symptoms, treatment and more.
Listen to their conversation in the embedded audio player below or at The Lake website. You can also scroll down to read a transcript of their conversation, edited lightly for readability.
Charles Dowdy: Got guests in the studio. … Kelli Braud, how are you?
Kelli: Good!
Charles: So, I know all about Tim. The good, the bad, the ugly. I just need to know the good about you; you don’t have to give us the bad or the ugly.
Kelli: OK. So, my name is Kelli Braud and I am a dietician diabetes educator at St. Tammany Health System. I am married with two kids and live locally.
Charles: Good. Well, we are glad to have you. Tell your background. How did you get to do what you do? And you went to school where?
Kelli: I went to LSU for undergrad and got a bachelors in dietetics and then did my dietetic internship at Southern University in Baton Rouge, then went on to get my masters at Southeastern.
Charles: Did you always have an interest in doing what you are doing? Did this just kind of find you? How did that happen?
Kelli: I have always been interested in food and recipes and healthy eating, so it is just kind of something I have stuck with and pursued.
Charles: Ok, so chicken nuggets at your house on a late Sunday ballgame or no? Or healthy chicken nuggets?
Kelli: We do chicken nuggets.
Charles: As far as our diets, do you try to incorporate – when you can – in terms of your kids’ diets and stuff?
Kelli: Yes, we definitely do things like chicken nuggets, but we try to incorporate some things like veggies and fruit and whatever else I can get them to eat that is semi-healthy.
Charles: So let’s talk about it, because obviously diabetes is a big problem in Southeast Louisiana. So, why?
Kelli: Yes, diabetes. Our culture, food – there are lots of different risk factors that can contribute to diabetes. November is Diabetes Awareness Month, so we just want to kind of give some valuable information today on how we can diagnose diabetes and hopefully prevent it or delay any kind of chronic complications that can occur from having diabetes.
Charles: When you talk about diagnosis, is that a problem? Are people out there running around with diabetes that don’t know they have it?
Kelli: Yes. One in three people actually have pre-diabetes and don’t even know it. Pre-diabetes is where your blood sugars are high but they are not quite high enough to diagnose you with diabetes. When someone is diagnosed with pre-diabetes, that is when we can really educate them on diet and lifestyle changes. We could hopefully make some changes there that would prevent them from developing Type 2 diabetes.
Charles: All right, I was going to ask what I call a dumb question, which I am not scared to do: So, it is a blood test, I guess? Is that what you do to diagnose this?
Kelli: Yes. Typically, it is just something your primary care physician would do. It is called a hemoglobin A1C. It is a test that actually measure how much sugar is sticking to your red blood cells over a three-month period. So, it is a three-month average of how well your blood sugars have been in control. So, someone with an A1C between 5.7 and 6.4 percent has pre-diabetes.
Charles: But you can stop it if you change your behaviors then? Slow it down?
Kelli: You can definitely delay if from progressing to Type 2 diabetes if you make lifestyle changes at that point.
Charles: Clearly, diet is one of them, right?
Kelli: Yes.
Charles: What else? What else do we do?
Kelli: Just increasing exercise, monitoring blood sugars if needed, and if further education is needed. Getting an order from your physician to meet with someone that is either a dietician or a diabetes educator to help manage.
Charles: What are the symptoms, in terms of like a 50-year-old male who feels OK maybe? Is he going to feel bad? Lethargic, what are the symptoms?
Kelli: Typically, when someone has high blood sugars over a period of time, the classic symptoms are increased thirst and increased urination. That is something to definitely look out for. Blurry vision, weakness, fatigue, increased hunger, dry skin. Those are some of the symptoms of diabetes.
Charles: There are a couple of different types (of diabetes). I know that, right?
Kelli: Yes. There is Type 1 diabetes, which is generally diagnosed in children, young adults. With Type 1 diabetes, it is actually classified as an autoimmune disorder, where something has attacked the beta cells in the pancreas and the pancreas no longer makes insulin. So, in Type 1 diabetes, insulin is needed every day. Type 2 diabetes –
Charles: And is that more common, the Type 2 diabetes.
Kelli: Yes, Type 2 diabetes is more common. With Type 2 diabetes, you are still making insulin, but either not enough or it is just not being used efficiently. So, with Type 2 diabetes what happens is insulin is needed to push sugar from in the blood into the cells to give us energy. If you are not making enough or it is not being used right, it can’t do that, so that sugar just builds up in the blood.
Charles: And remind me again how big of a problem this is. How many people out there have diabetes?
Kelli: Well, there is one in three that are diagnosed with pre-diabetes and don’t even know it. … There is about 400 million people worldwide that are diagnosed with diabetes.
Charles: And we talked about the fact that it is a problem in Southeast Louisiana in particular. So, what is your team like? What do you all do? Give me an idea how we deal with this.
Kelli: OK, so if someone is diagnosed with diabetes at St. Tammany Health System, we do have an outpatient diabetes education program that is accredited by the ADA. We have educators in two of our clinics, the STPN Folsom clinic and the STPN Covington clinic. We also have the ability to see outpatients at the hospital.
We can see a wide variety of people that have diabetes, whether it is Type 1 diabetes, Type 2 diabetes, gestational diabetes even. We are available and we would just need a referral from the physician, which is usually pretty easy to get. We would educate the patient. We would help them manage their diabetes. We do a lot of education on diet and exercise, as well as medication – helping them to understand why they are on the medication they are on, how to take it appropriately, monitoring blood sugars. There is lots of new technology out there these days to help people better control their diabetes.
Charles: And that is what it is about, I guess. Control, right? I mean, it is just about keeping it under control.
Kelli: Exactly: Prevent any of those complications that can occur from having high blood sugars.
Charles: All right, I mean anything else I should have asked you that I didn’t? I mean, we have covered the gamut.
Kelli: I just want to say also that we are going to, pretty soon here, resume our group with diabetes education classes at the Outpatient Pavilion on Bootlegger or 1085. We hope to incorporate some new classes. We hope to have a class on physical activity that we will do with the cardiopulmonary cardiac physiologist at St. Tammany. And then we also hope to do some foot screens. We hopefully will be working with wound care to get some foot screens during those classes. So: comprehensive.
Charles: If people have questions, there is a website. You can hit the website where?
Kelli: There is a website. It is going to be StTammany.health/DiabetesED. You can check out that website for more information on our program. Our contact number is also available. It is (985) 871-5983.
Charles: Alright, Kelli, it has been a pleasure to meet you. Thanks for the visit and all the good information.
Kelli: Alright, thank you.