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Category: Blog

Highlights from our Twitter Chat with the Fibroid Forum UK
BlogFibroids Twitter Chats
March 19, 2018

Highlights from our Twitter Chat with the Fibroid Forum UK

On 14th March, we hosted a fibroids Twitter chat with the Fibroid Forum UK. We had a great time discussing the work of The Forum, how they’re supporting women who have been affected by fibroids and explored some of the challenges women with fibroids encounter.

You can read some of the highlights from this really interesting chat below and if you have any questions for the Fibroid Forum, please do send them an email or drop by their next support group session (all the details are in the chat below).

Be Prepared. Period.

By admin
Inspirational People in Healthcare: Apryll Chase
Blog
March 16, 2018

Inspirational People in Healthcare: Apryll Chase

Welcome back to our Inspirational People in Healthcare blog series. Today we are absolutely delighted to feature Apryll Chase.

Apryll Chase is a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at St George’s Hospital in London and has a specialist interest in ambulatory and endoscopic gynaecology, with a focus on the evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of pre-malignant disease.

She studied medicine at Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’ School of Medicine, KCL which she followed with extensive training at centres of excellence for Obstetrics and Gynaecological Surgery. She holds post-graduate qualifications in Clinical Leadership and in Academic Practice; has completed Fellowships in Ambulatory and Endoscopic Gynaecology, and in Management and Leadership in Education; including pursuing an MA in Academic Practice (Education).

Ms Chase is passionate about education, mentoring and widening participation in medicine and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She has taught undergraduate students at leading medical schools throughout London, has been on a number of examination and assessment committees and developed courses and teaching materials for students and qualified doctors. She is an innovator in medical education having been involved in the creation and evaluation of e-learning tools, clinical simulations and video-based teaching resources which led to her receiving the Excellence in Education Innovation Award from the Simulation, Technology and Enhanced Learning Initiative of NHS London in 2010 and the Excellence in Contribution to Education Award from the School of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, HEE Kent, Surrey & Sussex in 2013.

She is well-respected in her field having served on several boards and advisory committees at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Health Education England and the Confederation of South London Lead Providers, to name a few. She is widely published in her speciality and in education, has delivered presentations worldwide and has not only received the awards previously mentioned, but her excellence as been recognised through prizes, scholarships and being awarded several leadership positions.

Ms Chase is also very active in her community having coordinated or participated in the following programmes:  Hands up for Health, Rise Leadership Academy, Access to Medicine Scheme (King’s College London), Annual CV Clinic (Bahamas), Guy’s, King’s and St. Thomas’ Mentoring Scheme and the National Respect Campaign.

Apryll Chase is a true inspiration having excelled both in her field of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and in education. We wish her every success as she continues to have such a positive and significant impact in the field of medicine and on the next generation of doctors.

By admin
Fly Girls Fitness, Wellness and Mindfulness
Blog
March 12, 2018

Fly Girls Fitness, Wellness and Mindfulness

It is always wonderful coming across organisations in the health and wellbeing field who are making a significant impact in their community, and Fly Girls Fitness, Wellness and Mindfulness is one of those organisations.

Fly Girls Fitness, Wellness and Mindfulness is an award-winning organisation based in Wembley in the UK and founded by Amanda Epe who is a writer, coach and health promotion specialist. They aim to improve the health and wellbeing of their community through creativity and activity. Their work primarily focuses on girls, women and young people and centres around three activities:

  • Fly Girls Fitness
  • The Fly Girls Running Community
  • Fly Girls Wellness (writing for wellbeing workshops)

Fly Girls Fitness

With Fly Girls Fitness young girls are encouraged to get active using fun activities likes Box Fit and Dance Fit. Here young ladies from the age of 12-25 can come together for free to have fun, get fit and improve their health. The sessions are all about the participants with attendees being able to bring their own playlist of music, this greatly enhances the experience making sessions more enjoyable and giving everyone a sense of ownership of the class.

Classes take place every Saturday afternoon from 3:15pm to 4:15pm at the Chalkhill Centre in Wembley.

Fly Girls Running Community

The Fly Girls Running Community is a group of local women mostly from the London Borough of Brent who meet every Sunday morning at 9am to run together at the national stadium, Wembley. Women of all ages and abilities assemble in the municipal offices at the civic centre before they move upstairs to the stadium for their warm up exercises. The run is for girls over 14 to senior women but particularly targeted at the older population and women from African, Caribbean and Asian heritages, who have higher rates of health inequalities.

This is a get-me-started, run-together group, which started initially as 3 women back in October 2016 and has grown to 30 registered members.  By getting people started the group encourages people who are new to running and/or being active. New members feel welcome in their friendly group where members are non-competitive, and the individual decides whether they wish to run or walk. Those who are new to running take it step by step, gradually going from walking to slow jogging up to 2km, 5km or beyond.

The Fly Girls Running Community has been a massive success with the group winning Run Group of the Year at the London Region England Athletics Volunteer Awards 2017. This was an amazing achievement with finalists being selected from over 600 entries in various categories. In addition to this, Amanda Epe, founder of Fly Girls won Run Leader of the Year.

Fly Girls Wellness

With Fly Girls Wellness, Amanda Epe being a writer herself, explores writing as social therapy. The benefits of writing as therapy has been widely studied and we’ve even written a blog about this here.

Fly Girls Wellness recognises that writing can help people clear their mind and make sense of their situation. They state that writing brings clarity and can bring about a remarkable transformation of feelings. With this in mind they aim to create an opportunity for people to share their true thoughts which can build confidence.  Their Writing for Wellbeing sessions are very different to regular literary groups where members critic your writing style, instead it aims to connect people with each other as their true feelings are shared through writing.

This is a great initiative that provides attendees with a creative way to improve their wellbeing, express their feelings and address the challenges of life.

Find Out More

We love the creative way that Fly Girls is addressing the health and wellbeing challenges in their community and wish them every success with their work.

To find out more about their work you can visit their website or follow them on social media

Facebook: @MsRoseBlossom

Twitter: @MsRoseBlossom

Instagram: @flygirlsuk

By admin
We Publish A New Fact Sheet on Fibroids and Exercise
BlogFibroidsPhysical Activity
March 5, 2018

We Publish A New Fact Sheet on Fibroids and Exercise

We are so happy to announce the publication of our new fact sheet on fibroids and exercise. This is the first in our new series of fibroids fact sheets which aim to cover a range of topics that you have told us are important to you.

This fact sheet series is a direct result of the findings of our small research project where we explored the needs of women with fibroids. From this work we discovered that there were significant gaps in the information and support available to women and we are on a mission to fill those gaps. We have worked towards this by:

Our fibroids and exercise fact sheet discusses how exercise can help alleviate the symptoms of fibroids and provides readers with simple tips on how to get active without aggravating their current symptoms. We hope that this resource will provide women with useful information that empowers them to take control of their health and take positive steps towards improving their health and wellbeing. You can download the fact sheet in the download section below.

Coming soon….

The next fact sheet in the series will be published soon and this will focus on fibroids and mental wellbeing. This fact sheet will aim to help women identify, understand and address the emotions that may be associated with having fibroids.

Thank yous

We’d like to thank Candice Bryan from Noire Wellness for contributing to this new fact sheet, Way Wive Wordz Publishing, Editing and Tuition for their editing services and FutureSoft for their design work.

By admin
We Join Forces with Noire Wellness for a Fibroids Campaign
BlogFibroids
March 1, 2018

We Join Forces with Noire Wellness for a Fibroids Campaign

We are so happy to announce that we’ve joined forces with Noire Wellness to launch a fibroids campaign today, in the run-up to International Women’s Day on 8th March.

The theme for International Women’s Day this year is #PressForProgress and, together with Noire Wellness, we are calling for everyone to #PressForProgress to improve the experience of women with fibroids.

We believe that for progress to be made, there needs to be:

  • Breakthrough research into fibroids and ethnicity
  • Patient insight on the impact of diet and exercise on fibroids
  • A commitment to professional excellence when caring for women with fibroids, who have a family history of fibroids or who have symptoms associated with fibroids
  • Global and local support networks to ensure that women with fibroids never feel isolated
  • Greater awareness of fibroids, its symptoms and impact on women’s lives, particularly the psycho-social impact.

We want all women, particularly women who have been affected by fibroids, to join us in our social media campaign to highlight the change that needs to occur to improve the experience, care, health and wellbeing of women with fibroids.

We’ve created a range of resources you can use to join us in this campaign. These include images for social media, Facebook and Twitter headers, sample social media posts and a media kit. For more information and to download our resources, please visit our campaign page here.

The Power of Partnership Working

We are extremely proud of this collaboration which has brought together two organisations passionate about addressing the issues that women with fibroids face. We believe we are stronger together and can achieve so much more by pooling our resources, expertise and strengths. We hope that this will be the start of many joint health initiatives.

More Information

For more information about this campaign, please visit the campaign page here or send us an email, we’d be very happy to hear from you.

By admin
Our Name Change is Complete
Blog
February 26, 2018

Our Name Change is Complete

Hello all, this is just a quick post to let you know that our name change is formally and legally complete. We have now changed our name from The Lake Foundation to Lake Health and Wellbeing.

As you know, we moved to the Caribbean from the UK and the move provided an opportunity for us to make some improvements to our organisation which involved the name change and an analysis of our work.

We believe the name change better reflects what we do, and we’ve analysed our work and have categorised what we do as follows: research, public health interventions, consultancy and events. This is similar to our previous categories and we’ve now explained each category and included examples of the type of work we do to make it easier for our supporters to understand what we offer.

We still have the same aim of improving the health and wellbeing of the black community and we’re still pretty much the same organisation except we’re now registered as a business rather than a charitable incorporated organisation. This is because the charitable incorporated organisation structure doesn’t exist in the Caribbean, but we’ll still behave in the same way, so we’ll be an ethical business with a social mission.

We have now changed all our social media handles, you don’t have to do anything as we have retained all our followers, but please remember if you want to send us a message via social media or mention us in posts, to use the new handles, which are:

  • Facebook @lakehealthwellbeing
  • Twitter @lakehealthwell

Our email addresses will remain the same for now, we’ll alert you when we make any changes.

Thank you so much for all your support and we look forward to continuing this exciting journey of change. Have a great week and if you have any questions, please do leave us a comment below.

By admin
Our Fibroids Twitter Chat with Self Care Activist Laterria Patton
BlogFibroids Twitter Chats
February 23, 2018

Our Fibroids Twitter Chat with Self Care Activist Laterria Patton

On 21st February we were delighted to host another fibroids Twitter chat. Our featured guest was Laterria Patton.

Laterria Patton is a Self Care Activist who writes a food blog that promotes reproductive health to black women. The blog content utilizes natural self-healing food practices to educate black women who are suffering with reproductive health problems about the hormonal process, and how to keep it in balance.

During our chat we had an interesting discussion with Laterria  about the common challenges that contribute to uterine disorders (like fibroids), how these challenges can be overcome and how women can achieve optimal uterine health through self-healing food practices.

If you missed our Twitter chat, have no fear, you can read the highlights below.

By admin
Improving our Health and Wellbeing Through Gardening: Growing Tomatoes
BlogGardening
February 14, 2018

Improving our Health and Wellbeing Through Gardening: Growing Tomatoes

Welcome back to our gardening and health blog series where we’ve been taking you on a personal journey as we explore the health and wellbeing benefits of gardening for ourselves.

Today, Abi Begho is back and this time she’s sharing her experience of growing tomatoes. She discusses the ups and downs, the need for patience and the joy of harvesting your first fruits.

We absolutely love tomatoes in my house. We eat them almost every day – in salads, we make Nigerian stew with them, we use them in omelettes, stir fries, sandwiches and much more. You name the dish and we’ll put a tomato in it!

When it came to deciding what to grow in our vegetable garden, tomatoes were first on our list and the first thing we tried.

When I started looking into tomatoes, I must be honest, I soon realised I really didn’t know a thing about them even though I eat them every day.

I was shocked at the variety of tomatoes out there, I was just aware of cherry, plum and what I call “normal” tomatoes, but this is just the tip of the ice berg. I was shocked to learn that there are over 700 varieties of tomatoes, they come in quite a few colours, not just red – yellow, orange, pink,  purple and black, and they have some very interesting names  – Beefsteak, Big Boy, Pink Brandywine, Pink Girl, Lemon Boy, Golden Jubliee and  Better Boy.

Deciding what variety to grow

When it came to deciding which tomato variety to grow, because there were so many to choose from, I decided the best thing to do would be to extract the seeds from a local variety that we buy in our super market all the time. This means that I have no idea what variety it is (as it’s not listed on the package), but I knew it tasted nice and as it’s grown locally then that suggested to me that it would grow well in our garden (I hoped!).

Although this is how I selected which tomato variety to grow, the advice from experts is to base your decision on more scientific factors – how disease resistant a variety is, how it grows (is it determinate or indeterminate) and the time it takes to mature.

From Seed to Fruit

Once I had decided on what tomatoes to grow, then it was planting time.

My seedlings about a week after planting the tomato seeds

In my last blog I explained that I simply sliced up a tomato making sure each of the slices had seeds in them, buried the slices in soil and watered them and in less than a week my seeds had germinated and I had about ten seedlings growing happily in my container. I was so excited and just couldn’t wait to see the seedlings develop.

I kept an eye on the seedlings and watered them regularly and one week later their true leaves (second set of leaves) had developed, a sign that the seedlings were developing well. At this point I pretty much left them alone, under a tree that got a lot of sunlight (but protected them from the intense afternoon sun here in St Kitts) and watered them regularly.

Tomato Flower

Tomato Flower

When they had outgrown the container, I put some of the young tomato plants in a large pot and the others I planted into my newly created vegetable bed. Then came the test of patience.  One thing gardening teaches you is patience.  Every morning I would go out into the garden and will them to grow, I was so excited every time I saw them develop just a little bit more, it was fascinating.

Two months after planting my tomato seeds I noticed flower buds developing (the very first sign that tomatoes are coming soon) and a few days after that a lovely yellow tomato flower had developed. I thought: ‘yes!  I’ll have tomatoes in a couple of weeks.’ What did I say about patience?  There was more waiting. It took another 6 weeks to get my first ripe tomato and as I type I have 51 green tomatoes growing nicely and waiting to ripen ( ah-mazing!)

Check out the video below to see me picking my second ripe tomato.

Another important thing to mention is that I had to create a support system for my tomato plants. Due to the weight of tomatoes most plants need some form of support to prevent the fruit from weighing them down. There are many options out there and I chose to create a tomato trellis (see picture on the right), I created this using stakes and string. As the plants grew I would tie the main stem loosely to the trellis and weave the leaves horizontally along the string. This, so far (it is still early days), has given the plants some support and training them to grow along the trellis, as well as pruning the plants, has kept them neat and contained.

Challenges

The four main challenges I have encountered thus far are:

Insects – Living in the Caribbean means there are a lot of bugs and insects to contend with and they all seem to love tomatoes as much as I do!  To date, they haven’t caused any major problems, but I did lose two tomatoes to caterpillars who ate them for lunch one day.  I was so sad, it felt like all my hard work had gone to waste, at least it was only two tomatoes . I’ve been keeping an eye out for tomato-eating insects and have flicked a few caterpillars off the plants before they made a meal of the tomatoes.

This is what blossom end rot looks like

Blossom End Rot – I woke up one morning shocked to see two of my tomatoes with dark patches on their bottoms, like they were rotting. I promptly discarded them hoping that they wouldn’t affect the tomatoes next to them.  Then, a few days later, the same thing happened to two more tomatoes on the same plant but in a different location. I was dejected, first insects now some horrible looking disease. After a Google search I learnt that is was blossom end rot and not as bad as it looked.

Blossom end rot occurs due to a calcium deficiency where the plant, for various reasons, is unable to absorb enough calcium for its development. The advice from Gardening Know How is not to worry, it usually clears up on its own, just pick off the affected tomatoes and discard them and make sure the plants get adequate water (not too much though). So, for the moment I am going to just wait it out and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.

Blossom drop – Last week I noticed that my new tomato flowers weren’t looking healthy at all. They seem drier than the previous set which really thrived and developed into 51 healthy tomatoes. These new tomato flowers are shrivelling up and some have already fallen off the plant without developing into fruit (Nooooo!). I couldn’t believe it. I had so many new flowers which I had hoped would form tomatoes, but alas, it was not meant to be. I hope the next set do better.

After doing some research, I found that blossom drop is common and looking at all the possible causes I have narrowed it down to two which I think could be the culprit:

  • Lack of water – we’ve had some short sharp showers and so I haven’t been watering the plants as regularly as I used to. Reflecting on this I don’t think the showers were providing enough water for my plants as the soil has been pretty dry so I am going to start watering every other day as before
  • Too many blossoms and fruit  – up until now my plants have been developing really well and I do currently have 51 tomatoes spread across 9 plants and a lot of flowers developing (and dying!). According to The Spruce having all these fruit and flowers developing at the same time requires a lot of energy and they will all be competing for a limited amount of energy and food, and only the strong will survive. They state that once the majority of tomatoes have been harvested the problem will resolve, so again, I just have to wait it out.

Playing the waiting game – In this blog, I have mentioned patience and waiting several times and that has been one of my biggest challenges: waiting for something significant to happen. In the whole scheme of things it hasn’t been that long (3 months) to get my first ripe tomato, but at times it has felt like a life-time. Each step does take a while – it took two months from seed to the first sign of a blossom, then from flower to pea-sized tomato took a week, that got me excited, but then it took over a month for that pea-sized tomato to develop into a fully ripened red tomato, but it was so worth the wait – it was delicious!

Why grow tomatoes?

Tomatoes are a great fruit to grow because they are packed with nutrients. They are known for their fairly high lycopene content which has been linked to a reduction in our risk of developing heart disease and cancer. Tomatoes are also rich in vitamin C, folate, vitamin K and fibre, and they contain iron, potassium, vitamin A and vitamin E.

All these nutrients and minerals are excellent for your overall health and by growing tomatoes in your garden you’ll get an ample supply so you’ll get a good dose of nutrients.

Happy gardening!

Well….that was a fairly long blog post (sorry!), but I hope that it gave you an idea of what it’s like to grow tomatoes and some of the challenges you may encounter along the way. Despite the challenges, it has been a lot of fun and very rewarding. I am looking forwarding to harvesting more tomatoes, so far I have only harvested two so there are many more to come. I’ll keep you all updated.

In my next blog I will move on to my okras – the stars of the show!

See you next time and happy gardening!

Some references and more information

  1. Identifying Tomatoes with Blossom End Rot
  2. How to prevent blossom end rot
  3. What kind of tomatoes should I grow
  4. Controlling Blossom Drop 

If you missed our previous blogs you can read them using the links below

  1. Improving Our Health and Wellbeing Through Gardening: An Introduction
  2. Improving Our Health and Wellbeing Through Gardening: How I Got Started

By admin
St Kitts World Cancer Day Luncheon: A Celebration of Hope
BlogCancer
February 12, 2018

St Kitts World Cancer Day Luncheon: A Celebration of Hope

Yesterday, we were delighted to attend the St Kitts World Cancer Day Luncheon. This was an event organised as a celebration of hope to honour the lives of cancer survivors in St Kitts and Nevis. The event was organised by the Health Promotion Unit at the Ministry of Health with support from Lake Health and Wellbeing and the Department of Youth Empowerment.

The event featured talks from high-profile guests including the Minister of State with responsibility for Health, Social and Community Services and Gender Affairs, Minister Wendy Phipps and Chief Medical Officer Dr Hazel Laws.

We also heard from cancer survivors who shared their experience very powerfully through poetry and testimonies. Carla Astaphan recited her poem Left Breastie which she wrote shortly after she was diagnosed with breast cancer and Agness Farell spoke of her experience of being diagnosed in 1998, she recounted her ups and downs and the formation of her support group Reach for Recovery.

In addition to these presentations, the Coordinator of Community Nursing Services, Nurse Eulynis Brown gave a very informative overview of cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine which will soon be introduced in St Kitts and encouraged attendees to support the Ministry in its roll-out as it’s a very effective method of preventing cervical cancer.


The highlight of the event was the presentation made to the longest living, oldest and youngest cancer survivors. It was moving to see the longest living cancer survivor being recognised, she was diagnosed 21 years ago and faced both breast and lung cancer. Despite all her challenges, now at the age of 82, she is so positive, happy and full of life; a true hero and inspiration to us all.

This was a positive and uplifting event which demonstrated the strength of the human spirit and we were honoured to have attended and been asked to deliver the vote of thanks.

By admin
World Cancer Day in St Kitts
BlogCancer
February 4, 2018

World Cancer Day in St Kitts

Today is World Cancer Day, a day that gives the entire world the opportunity to come together to show solidarity on an issue that pretty much touches everybody – whether that be directly or indirectly through a family member, friend or colleague who has been diagnosed. The day aims to be a positive day with the focus being on empowerment, celebrating the lives of those who have been diagnosed and highlighting that everyone has a part to play in fighting cancer.

The theme for today is “We can. I can.” and is part of a three-year campaign exploring how everyone can contribute to reducing the global burden of cancer.  Organisers of World Cancer Day, the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), have developed a set of key messages that show exactly how everyone, as a collective or as  an individual, can play a role in reducing the impact of cancer. These messages are:

We Can:

  • Inspire action, take action
  • Prevent cancer
  • Create healthy schools
  • Create healthy workplaces
  • Create healthy cities
  • Support others to return to work
  • Challenge perceptions
  • Improve access to cancer care
  • Shape policy
  • Build a quality workforce
  • Make the case for investing in cancer control
  • Join forces to make a difference

I Can:

  • Make healthy choices
  • Understand that early detection saves lives
  • Ask for support
  • Return to work
  • Take control of my cancer journey
  • Love and be loved
  • Make my voice heard

The aim of these messages is to reduce the millions of preventable cancer deaths that sadly take place throughout the world each year by giving everyone clear information and pushing governments to make cancer a priority.

World Cancer Day in St Kitts.

As you may know, we are now based in St Kitts, and for World Cancer Day we are delighted to have partnered with the Health Promotion Team at the Ministry of Health to take the key messages of World Cancer Day out in the community.

We started with a social media campaign using the wonderful resources developed by the UICC and of course the #WeCanICan theme but added #SKNCan (i.e. St Kitts and Nevis Can) to raise awareness of what residents of St Kitts and Nevis can do to reduce their cancer risk.

As part of our social media activity we took the messages (physically, on selfie cards!) to the streets of Basseterre and asked members of the public, businesses and government departments what messages resonated with them and did they feel they might consider taking forward to do their part in beating cancer. We then took pictures of people holding the selfie cards with the message that best represented what people thought would be most effective and these were used to raise awareness last week, in the run-up to World Cancer Day.

This was a great way to raise awareness in the community, it was fun and a bit light-hearted, but still got important messages across to the public whilst creating some teachable moments as people asked questions about what they could do specifically to prevent cancer.

We’re also in the process of organising a cancer awareness lunch to be held on 11th February where we’ll be celebrating survivors, providing information on what the public can do to reduce their risk of developing cancer and promoting early detection through awareness of signs and symptoms and seeking help promptly.

You Can Get Involved

There is still time to get involved in this campaign.

You can visit the World Cancer Day’s website, download a selfie card, take a picture and post it on social media to show what you can do to help in the fight against cancer. Don’t forget to include the hashtags #WorldCancerDay, #WCD2018 and #WeCanICan. If you’re in St Kitts and Nevis, then go ahead and add #SKNCan.

For all the St Kitts residents out there, you can attend our cancer awareness lunch next Sunday. Stay tuned to our events page for all the details!

By admin