Human Resources Issues for Senior Management
Issue link: https://digital.hrreporter.com/i/605961
10/CANADIAN HR STRATEGY "There's still some uncertainty in the actual returns and ROI, but it's de nitely a huge opportunity." There are some great interventions we know work, but it's going to take a culture shift, says Taylor. To that end, it's about creating a context in the workplace in which health can be the natural outcome, says Nagpal — not a chore. "People really blame themselves when they become over- weight, or they develop Type 2 diabetes," she says. "And while you could say that that is true, people behave within the broad- er context of where they live. So if you're in a workplace that "MOBILIZING HEALTH BEHAVIOURS WILL WIN THIS BATTLE WE'RE HAVING." WHAT EXACTLY IS DIABETES? So what does diabetes do to the body? Simply put, diabetes means chronically elevated sugar in the bloodstream, says David Satok, corporate medical director at Rogers Communications in Toronto. "I think about sugar as the fuel for the cell, and everything we eat turns into sugar that can actually power the cell so that we can function," he says. "The problem with diabetes is there's actually too much fuel circulating through the system. And the way I describe this to patients is if you think about sugar in your blood vessels, in your blood, as kind of like brine, so salt in water… if you put a cucumber in brine for long enough, you get a pickle. Well, diabetes is like that. When we have constant and chronic high sugar levels, that affects our tissues… we essentially pickle our organs." Generally speaking, there are two main types of diabetes: Type 1 and Type 2. "We think about Type 1 diabetes, which is the insulin-dependent diabetes that is really related to a lack of insulin in the system," he says. "Type 2 dia- betes is that type of diabetes (where) there's a lot of insulin and there's a lot of cells, but they don't interact well. It's kind of like the key and the lock don't really work very well — so there's a sense of resistance. And for some people, there's actually a lack of insulin as well." The number of people with Type 2 diabetes far outweighs the number of people with Type 1, says Satok. "It's probably about 90 per cent, 95 per cent Type 2 and ve per cent, 10 per cent Type 1." There's also a condition called gestational diabetes, says Seema Nagpal, director of public policy at the Canadian Diabetes Association in Ottawa. "(That) occurs in about 18 per cent of pregnancies. It's a temporary condi- tion that affects women and it goes away after the pregnancy is complete. But it places women and the children at higher risk for Type 2 diabetes in the future."