Culture, economics play role in diabetes control

While the loss of culture has had a devastating effect on Canada’s First Nations people in a variety of ways, a new study shows culture may play a role in the prevention of chronic disease.

Richard Oster, and his team of researchers from the University of Alberta, found that a community that is more connected to its traditional and cultural ways suffers lower rates of diabetes.

“Cultural destruction has played a big role. Things like residential schools… that has an ongoing intergenerational impact on people. So taking care of health might be difficult when you’re dealing with that,” said Oster.

The study, entitled “Cultural continuity, traditional Indigenous language, and diabetes in Alberta’s First Nations: a mixed method study,” was conducted over a two-year period and consisted of two-parts.

Oster acknowledges that stress may have an impact, as inflammation can be the cause of many chronic conditions. However, he says the change in diet and everyday activity may also be playing a role.

“Europeans have had hundreds of years to adapt to our changes in environment…to the Industrial Revolution. But for Aboriginal people, it happened overnight. They were living this nomadic lifestyle, living off the land, and then they’re forced to eat white sugar and fat.”

According to Oster, traditional foods were likely much healthier for First Nation’s peoples’ bodies than much of the food we find today with our modern conveniences. And traditional activity, like hunting, which required a lot of walking, burned off any excess calories Aboriginal people may have consumed.

“I like to say Aboriginal people have the good genes for the wrong environment,” said Oster.

In the first part of the study, the team consulted 10 Cree and Blackfoot leaders to get an idea of what culture meant to them, before moving on to compare diabetes rates with cultural continuity in 30 Alberta First Nations’ communities.

Oster says he and his team settled on language as their cultural indicator, because language contains embedded forms of traditional knowledge.

“Enmeshed in their language, in their culture… are stories about how to live a healthy lifestyle, and how to be mentally healthy, physically healthy, emotionally healthy, and spiritually healthy. So learning that, and being connected to that, people can actually do that… learn how to lead a healthy life,” he said.

Rick Lightning, a respected leader in the community of Maskwacis, was one of the people Oster reached out to during the first part of the study.

“I was diagnosed when I was 55,” said Lightning. “And like everyone else, I was in denial until I saw a couple of friends with one leg and one was blind. And that kind of scared me into being a little more serious.”

Lightning, who has presented on the study’s findings with Oster, also helps generate awareness of the disease in his home community.

He said denial is a huge issue for the people who are getting diagnosed now because making the necessary lifestyle changes isn’t always easy, given the low employment and high poverty rates in communities like Maskwacis.

“Once you become diabetic, you have to eat healthy foods. But you have to have a job to buy the healthy foods. And you have to have the benefits, and if you don’t have a job, you don’t have the benefits,” he said.

 But Lightning’s biggest concern is for the youth, because the disease is being diagnosed at younger and younger ages.

 “If you have diabetes in the family, it means it’s just dormant right now. It’s a matter of when… and we have to be very frugal about how we keep our lifestyle, and what we do,” he said.