Rockingham residents—get yourself checked!

By Heather Smith

Published: August 7, 2008

Portia Parris doesn’t want what happened to her to happen to anyone else.

During an eye exam last year, a doctor urged her to have her blood glucose levels checked. That’s when she learned she’d lived most of her adult life with an undiagnosed case of diabetes.

A year of education and awareness of the prevalence of diabetes in the black community prompted her to begin what became this Saturday’s full-fledged health screening at First Baptist Church on Hubbard Street.

Parris said there have been small clues pointing to her diabetes, but her physicians never looked closer.

“I was having problems with (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease), and the doctors ran some tests. Well, they found that I had a fatty liver, but it didn’t lead them to check me for diabetes,” she said.

Her church group began brainstorming for an outreach program, and Parris suggested a health screening. She said she knows many people don’t have health insurance or may not get the care the need. An event to run a few, free tests seemed to be an excellent service to the community, especially if it caught a disease that may have escaped notice.

“I found out I have diabetes almost by accident through an eye exam. I’d never had the symptoms before,” she said. “How many other people are looking for signs and don’t see them?”

For the screening, Parris turned to the Rockingham County Department of Public Health. They agreed to help but referred her to a group looking for such an opportunity.

Dr. Carolyn Blue is a professor with the University of North Carolina at Greensboro School of Nursing. She received a grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research to study discrepancies in health coverage. Blue decided to focus the study on the black community.

“From there, I contacted Dr. Blue. We talked and she agreed to come out to do the glucose checks,” Parris said.

“Pre-diabetes is a state where people might not have a blood-glucose level of 120mm, which is diabetes, but it may be around 100mm which is abnormally high,” Blue said. “The study will try to catch subjects before full diabetes develops and try to get blood-glucose levels back to normal.”

To begin the study, Blue and her students needed about 90 participants with pre-diabetes. To find them, the research group will offer several glucose screenings. People with pre-diabetes will be invited to participate in the study.

Three groups will receive the same materials and guidance about diet and exercise, but different levels of encouragement. The first group will receive educational materials, the second will also be given a pedometer and motivational interviews after a few weeks on the program, and the third will have materials, pedometer and outside motivation interviews for the entire program.

Blue said the goal is to find what level of education and motivation results in the best results. The data will be used to develop a pre-diabetes prevention plan for health departments or any other group. “It’s to see what kind of intervention is needed to stop the development of diabetes while making the program affordable,” Blue said.

Once the best tactic is found, all study participants will be the first to test Blue’s pre-diabetes prevention program.

While Blue said many people may be daunted at first blush by the changes they’ll have to make to avoid diabetes, it’s not as bad as it seems. Just ask Parris.

She said the discovery opened a new world of education about health and how diabetes affects her body. Instead of it requiring that she overhaul her life to deal with the disease, she found a few small changes maintained over the long term has given her more energy.

“I’ve started incorporating exercise into my day and I’ve started reading labels on different food to see what’s in it,” Parris said. “I try to stay away from things that have a lot of high fructose corn syrup.”

Now that she monitors her blood sugar, she can track the foods that raise levels of glycogen in her system.

“I pay attention and educate myself more and more about it,” she said.

Blue said research has found that about 8 percent of Americans have diabetes and twice as many can be classified as pre-diabetic. The number is higher among the black population, which prompted Blue to study the best way to intervene.

What causes there to be more cases of diabetes in black individuals is unclear.

“I don’t know what it is. Is it a mindset?” Parris said. “When we go to the doctor, we go to talk about things that bother us, like arthritis or aches and pains. We don’t go to have our glucose checked.”

Blue points to unavoidable factors such as genetics. She and Parris said diet has a great effect. Southern home cooking, rich with fried chicken and biscuits, is a fine tradition but contains high levels of fat and sugar.

“We take detailed diet histories, and we’ll find the subjects eat a lot of vegetables, but when we ask about preparation, there’s often some fatback or bacon added for flavor,” Blue said.

“For a lot of people, that’s how their family ate, so it’s habit now. It’s comforting,” Parris said. “But our grandparents were a lot more active. In these days, with conveniences and desk jobs, we’re becoming more and more sedentary.”

Parris proposed another factor.

“My mother’s cousins have diabetes,” she said. “I just found that out last year. I had never known that, but as we started to talk about it, that’s how I found out. That may be genetically where my diabetes comes from.”

Parris said the screening is not limited to the church members.

“I want everybody to come,” Parris said. “Your health is of utmost importance.”

Heather J. Smith can be reached at or 349-4331 ext. 16.