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BlogFibroids Twitter Chats
July 27, 2018

Highlights From Our #FibroidsChat With Jenny Rosenberg, the Executive Director of CARE About Fibroids

Highlights From Our #FibroidsChat With Jenny Rosenberg, the Executive Director of CARE About Fibroids

Our July 2018  #FibroidsChat was with Jenny Rosenberg, the Executive Director of CARE About Fibroids.

CARE About Fibroids is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit whose mission is to elevate uterine fibroids as a women’s health issue and drive change. Bringing together many of the nation’s most respected women’s health advocacy and policy-focused organizations to advance solutions, CARE About Fibroids is a catalyst for increased awareness, research and education about uterine fibroids, leading to earlier diagnosis and improved treatment.

If you missed this Twitter chat you can read through the highlights of our conversation below and if you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comments section at the bottom of this page or send us an email, we’d love to hear from you. Additionally, you can read the highlights of our previous #FibroidsChats here

— Lake Health and Wellbeing (@lakehealthwell) July 25, 2018

Are you interested in this topic? Then please do sign up to our fibroids mailing list here

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By Lake Health and Wellbeing
News
July 19, 2018

CARICOM Leaders Commit to Tackling NCDs

CARICOM Leaders Commit to Tackling NCDs

At the thirty-ninth regular meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on 4-6th July, leaders made a commitment to tackle non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the Caribbean.

Six priority areas were endorsed. These included:

  • Establishing and maintaining a smoke-free status for the region
  • Implementing policies geared to preventing childhood obesity including health-promoting school environments and improving front-of-package labelling
  • Promoting the elimination of cervical cancer
  • Support for mitigating post-disaster vulnerabilities related to NCDS, particularly nutrition, treatment and care
  • Increasing international financing and technical support
  • Strengthening accountability through national coordinating mechanisms

Leaders of the Caribbean discussed the upcoming UN High-Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases which will be held in September. The theme of this meeting is: scaling up multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral responses to the prevention and control of NCDs. It was felt that CARICOM member states should be well-represented at this meeting especially as, in 2007, CARICOM led the way on NCDs by hosting the first ever summit on NCDs.  This put the spotlight on this area leading to NCDs being included on the UN Development Agenda.

About CARICOM

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) consists of a group of 20 states, from the Bahamas in the north to Suriname and Guyana in the south, working together under four main pillars:  economic integration, foreign policy coordination, human and social development and security. You can find out more about the work of CARICOM here.

More Information

For more information about the 39th Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM held in July you can visit their website here or you can watch the videos below.

Opening Ceremony of the Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government

Closing Press Conference of the Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government

Picture Credit: CARICOM

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By Lake Health and Wellbeing
BlogEvents
July 9, 2018

We Attended The CARPHA Health Research Conference in St Kitts

We Attended The CARPHA Health Research Conference in St Kitts

We love attending health conferences. They’re a great opportunity to discover the latest advances in the field, learn something new and meet interesting people. Since moving to St Kitts about 10 months ago we haven’t had the opportunity to attend any conferences and so when we learnt that the 63rd Annual CARPHA Health Research Conference was going to be held right here in St Kitts, we jumped at the opportunity and registered immediately and started counting down the days until conference day.  In today’s blog we’re going to share some of the highlights of the conference from our point of view, but first, you may be asking: who or what is CARPHA?

CARPHA – Who Are They?

CARPHA stands for the Caribbean Public Health Agency and they are the only regional public health agency in the Caribbean. They provide strategic direction  in analysing, defining and responding to the public health priorities set out by CARICOM in order to prevent disease, promote health and respond to threats to the public’s health and emergencies. Their programme of work falls in the following categories

  • Emergency responses to disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding),
  • The surveillance and management of non-communicable diseases (NDCs) that have reached epidemic proportions such as obesity, cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
  • The surveillance and management of communicable diseases (CDs), including HIV / AIDS; re-emerging diseases, like tuberculosis in association with HIV/AIDS; and new communicable diseases that are now endemic in the region
  • The surveillance and prevention of injuries, violence and job-related illnesses.
  • Contribution to global health agreements and compliance with international health regulations

CARPHA Conference

Every year CARPHA hosts their health research conference which provides Caribbean researchers, at every level, with the opportunity to showcase their work and disseminate their research findings.  This provides the perfect environment to determine how cutting-edge research can contribute to the development of effective evidence-based policies, programmes and practices to tackle the Caribbean’s health challenges.

This year’s conference was the 63rd conference, making this event the longest running health research conference in the English-speaking Caribbean and it brought together policymakers, researchers, health professionals and public health officials from the Caribbean, Latin America, North America and Europe.

The theme for this year’s conference was ‘Sustainable Health Systems for Economic Growth, Development and Wealth.’ The aim of the conference was to provide an opportunity to raise awareness of Caribbean research that can provide the evidence and information to create stronger health systems in the region.

The conference was a three-day event, packed full of presentations, concurrent sessions, panel discussions, feature lectures, poster presentations and an exhibition, giving attendees an engaging, informative and diverse experience.

Our Conference Highlights

The conference on a whole was excellent, there was something for everyone, but for us certain presentations and pieces of work, really stood out for us. These included:

Assessing the impact of the Barbados Sugar Sweetened Beverage (SSB) Tax on Grocery Store Beverage Sales – with many countries  around the globe introducing a sugar tax it was interesting to hear about the experience in the Caribbean. This presentation summarised the findings, so far, from the introduction of a 10% tax on SSBs in Barbados in August 2015. It was promising to hear that following the tax there was an increase in water purchases, a 4.3% reduction in SSB purchases and a 5.2% increase in the purchase of non-sweetened drinks. It was interesting to note that the decline in SSB purchases was in expensive drinks and there was evidence that consumers were switching to cheaper SSBs.

Diabetes Distress and Diabetes Self-Care in Barbados – this presentation was insightful as we had never come across the term diabetes distress, which refers to the emotional impact of diabetes where patients may experience fear, frustration and guilt. It was interesting learning about this and how promoting self-care and self-management may address this issue.

Obesity and Weight Misperception Among Adults in Eastern Caribbean– this was a very well-presented and engaging talk that explored the extent to which people misunderstand their weight. Researchers found that in their study weight misperception was very common with the majority of people  under estimating their actual weight. This is a problem because it means that people who are overweight or obese don’t realise it, and if people don’t realise they have a problem with their weight they won’t take steps to address this. This leads to people remaining at risk of a number of health issues when they needn’t be. You can find out more about this study here.

Our Voices: Women’s Perspectives on Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening and Treatment in the English-speaking Windward Islands – this presentation really struck a chord with us as we conducted a similar piece of work exploring black British women’s beliefs about breast cancer and their help seeking behaviour. It was interesting to hear that their findings were very similar to what we found around fear, fatalism and stigma

Finally other highlights for us were, being new to the Caribbean, it was just wonderful meeting people, exploring the important health issues in the Caribbean (e.g. NCDs and mosquito borne diseases) and learning about interesting projects like ECHORN, the new Caribbean Cancer Registry Hub and The Seth Fund, as well as innovative methods of care like that being delivered by the Caribbean Cancer Centre Network – a partnered care hub and spoke model.

In Conclusion…

This was three days well-spent and a great introduction into the research being conducted in the Caribbean. We highly recommend this conference to anyone in the Public Health field and we look forward to next year’s conference. Every year the conference is hosted on a different Caribbean island, and we’re also looking forward to the announcement of which of the beautiful islands will host the conference next year.

More Information

To find out more about this year’s conference you can visit the conference website here and you can learn more about CARPHA here

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By Lake Health and Wellbeing
June 27, 2018

Episode 20: How We Stay Healthy

Wednesday 27th June, 2018

Our volunteers are back with another episode in their childhood obesity series. Today, is a quick podcast with Marecia, Eurecia, Jorecia, Chris and Vikell sharing how they stay healthy. In this episode they provide some great insight on easy ways to adopt a healthy lifestyle. They’re on a mission to make the Caribbean a healthy place.

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By Lake Health and Wellbeing
June 22, 2018

Fibroids Chat with Jenny Rosenberg

Fibroids Chat with Jenny Rosenberg

Our July Fibroids Twitter Chat will be with Jenny Rosenberg on 25th July 2018 at 2pm EST (that’s 7pm GMT, or 2pm AST).

Jenny Rosenberg is the Executive Director of CARE About Fibroids and is an internationally recognized leader in health care policy and strategic communications. Mrs. Rosenberg served for more than a decade in senior-level policy and communications positions in the Obama Administration and Congress.

Previously, Mrs. Rosenberg was Director of Communications to former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin and former U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Howard Koh. ​Her broad experience as a regulator, policymaker and communications expert brings a comprehensive, multifaceted approach to enhancing public awareness over critical public health issues.

CARE About Fibroids is a Washington, DC-based non-profit whose mission is to elevate uterine fibroids as a women’s health issue and drive change. Bringing together many of the nation’s most respected women’s health advocacy and policy-focused organizations to advance solutions, CARE About Fibroids is a catalyst for increased awareness, research and education about uterine fibroids, leading to earlier diagnosis and improved treatment.

Join our #FibroidsChat to find out more about the great work that CARE About Fibrioids is conducting. To take part in the conversation find us on Twitter on 25th July at  2pm (US EST and 7pmGMT ) and use the hashtag #FibroidsChat.

You can find out more about CARE About Fibroids here: www.careaboutfibroids.org and you can follow CARE About Fibroids on social media:

Twitter: @CAREAbtFibroids

Facebook: @CareAboutFibroids

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By Lake Health and Wellbeing
June 20, 2018

Episode 19: Childhood Obesity, A Youth Perspective on the Causes

Episode 19: Childhood Obesity, A Youth Perspective on the Causes

Welcome back to the Lake Health and Wellbeing podcast. In today’s episode our volunteers from the St Kitts Department of Youth Empowerment’s Volunteer Corp are back with the second episode in their childhood obesity series.

In today’s episode Marecia, Eurecia, Jorecia, Chris and Vikell have an interesting and lively discussion on the causes of childhood obesity. In this episode they cover:

  • The sale of unhealthy food near schools
  • Why teachers might not step in and encourage healthy behaviours in children
  • Cultural beliefs about weight
  • Inactivity and some of the reasons why today’s children aren’t as active as the generations before them
  • And much, much more!

You can get involved in this discussion by leaving a comment or question in the comments section below or emailing us your thoughts on this subject.

You can also support this project by signing the Healthy Caribbean Coalition’s Childhood Obesity Prevention Petition here

______

Podcast Music:

“Too Cool” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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By Lake Health and Wellbeing
Blog
June 18, 2018

How to Deal With a Spouse’s Addiction

How to Deal With a Spouse’s Addiction

We’re delighted to have Contance Ray, the founder of Recovery Well, back on our blog exploring addiction.  In her previous blog  Constance provided tips on how to get back on track after substance abuse relapse and in today’s blog Constance focuses on dealing with a spouse’s addiction.

Being married to someone with addiction can be one of life’s unexpected challenges. The road to recovery requires mutual commitment and support, and may be punctuated by difficulties and upheaval. However, it can be worth it, and both you and your loved one can come through this stronger and healthier.

Get Treatment

 When your relationship is exposed to addiction, its negative influences can harm married life. Its destabilizing effects can erode trust, happiness and leave a relationship in tatters. Without addressing addiction, the strains can grow and the situation worsens, especially if a mutually destructive cycle of blame and conflict develops. That’s why it’s crucial to urge your partner to accept treatment.

Your spouse’s treatment can be multifaceted, involving group and individual therapies, and can be complemented by support groups. It won’t be easy discussing addiction, so do so with tact and empathy and when your partner’s sober. Encourage them to visit a professional and offer to be with them to discuss their options. Affirming your commitment can be highly motivating. Treatment can give your spouse techniques to help overcome addiction and maintain sobriety. It may also offer some of the building blocks to heal marriage, and encourage self-care.

Move Forward Together

 Dealing with addiction can be a complex process, but the negativity and strain can be reduced. Some form of counseling or couples therapy may be the best approach to giving your marriage a safe environment to heal and repair. You and your partner will have the opportunity to identity issues and develop solutions to them. Addiction doesn’t happen overnight. A counselor can give insights into its origins, and restore communication and trust.

In the process, you may gain coping mechanisms and stress management techniques that can help your spouse, and yourself, minimize problems faced in the future. Counseling may be discomforting. Acknowledging each other’s struggles, and identifying harmful behavioral patterns won’t be easy. Yet creating lines of communication may go a long way to repairing some of the damage and hopefully bring you both emotionally closer as you move forward together.

Protect Finances

 A healthy marriage depends on stability, on savings and good credit, but addiction can leave finances in a parlous state. This can be a huge source of conflict, so it’s prudent to protect assets. Try to involve your spouse in the process every step of the way, and discuss with them the various options. Gently reassure them of your love and that you want what is best for the relationship. A financial plan will be essential to rebuilding depleted assets, and managing future expenses, such as your spouse’s recovery.

There are websites and apps that can give financial overviews and allow you to bring expenses under control. Set goals as well, either to pay off debts, or to look forward to things that you and your partner can work towards attaining. This can act as an incentive for recovery and give focus if temptation ever arises.

Lastly, consider separate accounts for savings and household expenses to ensure neither are adversely impacted. It’s a sensitive topic, but one which can provide additional security for both you and your spouse.

Think Future

 Looking forward is essential when facing addiction. It’s an ongoing condition, so focus on short and long-term goals, and emphasize smaller, manageable achievements. This can be a more forgiving gauge of progress that may mitigate frustrations and discouragement. Sometimes, however, the strain that addiction places on a marriage may be irreparable. You may come to the conclusion that your marriage has become unbearably toxic. There can be plenty of reasons for this, such as your partner not being committed to recovery, or their actions becoming unacceptably destructive to your life. Your welfare takes precedence over saving a relationship. If you have children, they too must come before a deteriorating home life.

Addiction’s impact on marriage can be overcome. It will require working together to heal and better understand each other’s struggles. No matter what happens to your marriage, your experiences will hopefully enable you both to be able to lead healthier and happier lives post-treatment.

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By Lake Health and Wellbeing
BlogEvents
May 25, 2018

St Kitts Marriott Wellness Lunch

St Kitts Marriott Wellness Lunch

On 23rd May, we attended the St Kitts Marriott Wellness Lunch. This was a lovely event, organised by the hotel for its staff, that aimed to promote healthy eating.

We were invited to have an information table to raise awareness of the work that we’re doing, and it really was a pleasure being at this event. We received a very warm welcome from everyone and had a steady stream of visitors to our information table who were genuinely interested in learning more about our projects and campaigns.

A member of staff signing the HCC’s childhood obesity prevention petition

We had some great conversations about a number of health issues and got the opportunity to talk to attendees about the Healthy Caribbean Coalition’s Childhood Obesity Prevention Campaign. This was very well-received with many showing their support by signing the childhood obesity prevention petition which will be presented to Caribbean leaders at the CARICOM heads of governments conference in July. You can find out more about this campaign and sign the e-petition here

We were able to speak to women about our fibroids survey which aims to understand the experiences of women with fibroids so that we can determine if there is a need to develop an awareness and support programme here in St Kitts. From our conversations, we learnt that  many women have been affected by fibroids and we hope that we can, in the future, provide some form of help to those who need it.

Additionally, it was  nice meeting representatives from other organisations such as MASA Assist, Nagico, the National bank and credit union, all doing great work in some form or the other to support the wellbing of the public.

The lunch also gave us the opportunity to showcase our new ‘Be Healthy’ badges which we recently released to encourage a healthy lifestyle. Our badges as well as our key rings, t-shirts, tote bag and mug are available on our new online shop. Please do visit our shop to find out more about these products. You can visit our shop here.

This was a fun event, in the beautiful ball room of the Marriott with some lovely healthy food and great conversation – the perfect way to spend an afternoon! We’d like to say a big thank you to the organisers for inviting us to take part and to everyone who visited our table, we really appreciate all the support and kind words, and we look forward to attending future events at the Marriott.

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By Lake Health and Wellbeing
BlogGardening
May 18, 2018

Improving Our Health and Wellbeing Through Gardening: Growing Peppers

Improving Our Health and Wellbeing Through Gardening: Growing Peppers

Hi folks, it’s Abi here and  I am back with another blog about my gardening experience and today I’d like to focus on my lovely peppers. To avoid repetition, I won’t go into the details of how I grew my peppers as I used the exact same technique I used when growing my tomatoes which you can read here.  What I thought I would do is focus on what I learnt from growing peppers, some of the challenges I encountered and how I overcame these.

Over the past 8 months or so I have been trying to grow four types of peppers – sweet peppers (or bell peppers), Scotch bonnets, Jalapeno peppers and Caribbean seasoning peppers (very similar to Scotch bonnets, but without the heat). Growing these peppers has been a huge challenge and I suppose I was lulled into a false sense of security as I started my gardening journey with tomatoes and okras which have been a breeze in comparison to peppers. If I had to score myself on my pepper assignment I would have to give myself a big fat D, I have failed miserably. I have only had some success (after several attempts) with sweet peppers and it looks like my third attempt at Scotch bonnets may (I don’t want to speak too soon) have produced some results.  Here are some of the challenges that I encountered that led me to give myself a big fat D.

Germination Was a Struggle

My bell peppers finally making an appearance after many months 🙂

Whilst reading up on how to grow peppers, I did learn that germination of peppers does take a lot longer than tomatoes, up to a month. So, I was prepared for that. On my first attempt I planted 24 bell pepper seeds and 24 Scotch bonnet seeds in my seed starting tray (egg containers!), and patiently waited. I watered my soil regularly and with no sign of seedlings at 3 weeks, I wasn’t worried, I thought: ‘well, I have read that it can take up to a month so no problem.’ I waited. After a month, nothing happened, but I was still optimistic and continued to wait patiently. At 6 weeks, I started to get worried and then after two months, I gave up and started again. This time I added Jalapeno and Caribbean seasoning peppers to my pepper collection and sadly I got the same results (I gave up after 6 weeks). I was disappointed. I couldn’t figure out what was going wrong, so after 4 months and 2 attempts I took a trip down to the St Kitts Agricultural Department to get some advice. They were lovely, really helpful and friendly. They explained it could be the seeds and that peppers can be a bit “particular” and I should keep trying. They did say maybe I should cheat and buy some of their young pepper plants which were growing well in their nursery and so I did, I cheated. I bought a row of pepper plants and transplanted them into the garden, thinking perfect I have a head start, but I had challenges with their growth too – I don’t think peppers like me.

I still wanted to try to grow peppers from seed so I tried again and again with the seeds and  finally I was able to get my bell peppers and some hot peppers to germinate (yay!). These are going well, but slowly.

Peppers Are Slow

My Scotch bonnet,  small and no signs of any peppers whatsoever 🙁

Having cheated and bought some seedlings and then finally had some success with my own seeds, I have quite a few pepper plants growing in my garden. Starting my gardening journey with tomatoes spoilt me because they grew relatively fast and I was expecting the same for my peppers, but pepper plants, or I should say my pepper plants, were sloooow! They really are taking their own time (but it may be my growing technique as I am a newbie!). If you’re going to grow peppers, you’ll need some patience.  As I sit here now I do have some really cute bell peppers developing and I have harvested about two (Very tasty!), but the Scotch bonnet is growing extremely slowly. So, with all the attempts and buying of seedlings it has taken me about 5 months to get my first bell pepper.

They Need Lots of Water

I live in the Caribbean and it has been really hot over the past few months and some of the challenges with the slow growth could be because they weren’t getting enough water (I am not sure).  I may have underestimated the amount of water that they needed. I am always worried about watering too much and my plants dying of root rot, so I suppose I am a little conservative when it comes to watering.  A couple of months ago, we had a guest over and they were looking at my garden and she felt I needed to give my plants a lot more water. So, she took over for a few days and soaked my peppers. I was really worried thinking they might drown. After about a week, my peppers seemed to perk up and looked a lot happier. Since then I can’t say they have grown any faster but they certainly look a lot healthier.

My Peppers Were Bugged!

Just as I was having some success with my bell peppers and feeling really good about them, I ventured out into the garden one morning and found that my largest pepper plant had lost ALL its leaves. I was shocked. How did that happen in just one night or morning? I looked around and spotted the culprit. A sneaky little green worm, which I later learned was a hornworm, ate my pepper leaves for breakfast. It was so greedy! It didn’t leave anything, all the leaves were gone. I was so upset and I thought that was it for that pepper plant. To my surprise and joy, about a week later my pepper plant started making a come-back, some new leaves were growing happily. I’ll see how it goes, I have my fingers crossed that this plant will survive.

Now, everyday I check my garden for hornworms and I have spotted a few which I have swiftly thrown over the wall!

It Has Been Fun

Although I haven’t been so lucky with my peppers it has been a lot of fun and a nice challenge. It has also been very rewarding too. When I noticed my first pepper, I was elated and when I picked my first pepper I was so proud of myself for persisting, it really was worth it. Although the bell pepper was a lot smaller than I expected, it tasted lovely.

A Great Learning Experience

I have learnt a lot about peppers over the past few months. Through my reading I have learnt that there are thousands of types of peppers (Wikipedia says about 50,000!!), which came as a real shock to me, I was only aware of five different types of peppers before I started looking into them. This means there is a type of pepper for every taste bud (sweet, hot, fruity, woody and smoky) and peppers come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours (red, green, orange, yellow, purple and more).

When we look at the history of peppers, they are native to Mexico, Central America and South America. They made their way to Spain in 1493 and from there spread to other countries.

Peppers are also quite nutrient rich, their nutrient content is dependent on the type of pepper, but most peppers contain vitamin A, C, K, B6, dietary fibre, thiamine, niacin, folate, magnesium, copper, potassium and manganese.

I have also learnt some personal lessons about the importance of patience, persistence and hard work (they really gave me a good workout).

I’m really looking forward to picking more bell peppers and watching my Scotch bonnets develop. I’ll keep you posted.

If you missed my 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
  3.  Improving Our Health and Wellbeing Through Gardening: Growing Tomatoes
  4. Improving Our Health and Wellbeing Through Gardening: Growing Okra
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By Lake Health and Wellbeing
April 11, 2018

Episode 9: Three Health Stories One Theme

Wednesday 11th April, 2018

We share three interesting health news stories and pick out an interesting theme that connects them all which we can all learn from.

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By Lake Health and Wellbeing
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