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Berlie’s story: Building Healthy Habits for the Future

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Berlie began the Complex Care program following a diagnosis of diabetes in July of last year. After feeling unwell for a time, she performed several tests with her family doctor, as she previously developed diabetes around 2008 when she was pregnant. As it turned out, her diabetes had returned so she began to consider her options: should she start seeing a dietician or invest in diet foods?

Berlie was driven to participate in the Complex Care program as she began thinking about the future. She began to ask questions about what would happen if she didn’t look after herself. Severe diabetes, she recounts, can lead to a loss of eyesight and soreness of the limbs. Were she to become blind, she would be unable to engage in her profession; she works helping people file taxes. Severe diabetes would make it much more difficult to look after her family.

Berlie realized that there would be obstacles if she didn’t look after herself. Compromises and changes needed to be made to be healthy and take control of her diabetes. She worked with her family nurse specifically around food and exercise, routinely working on new suggestions. In the past, he would get frustrated when she would deliberately eat healthy foods, but her blood sugar stayed high. She has learned healthy alternatives to target her blood sugar specifically. On top of this, her nurse encouraged her to start incorporating regular exercise, stressing that consistency is key when forming healthy habits.

A few months out of the program and she is feeling good – her clients ask what she has done. She looks and feels younger, and can engage more with life, as losing weight and treating diabetes has ended up mending other problems. Berlie recalls that she has been trying to lose weight for many years. She recounts consistently weighing in around 135 pounds, now she fluctuates between 116 and 120 pounds. She takes regular walks after supper, aiming for half an hour to an hour. She is more able to go canoeing and biking in the summertime, and she has more energy to be involved with her child – who is now 13 – spending good quality time. To make long-lasting change, she says, you have to work yourself and make a dedicated effort.

She has become more in tune with her body, explaining that: “I will know when my blood sugar is average, I feel I am healthy and feel no side effects. But on the other hand, you know when you are not following the rules because there are consequences.” Between her job and her family, she is busy, but she finds ways to use what she has learned in the Complex Care program to stay accountable and keep her blood sugar manageable.

Bernie recalls that the program was a positive experience, and while she would recommend the Complex Care programs to others in her situation, she wants others to know that while the programming works, people must be consistently motivated in order to change their lifestyles.

“It is important to take care of your body while you have the opportunity,” she says. “Life is not a movie where you can call cut and start from the top. You need to make good use of your one shot.”

Health Basics was my Kick Start to a Healthier Weight

Click here to visit the Red Deer Primary Care Centre.

Red Deer Primary Care Network (RDPCN) is a partnership between Family Doctors and Alberta Health Services. Health professionals such as psychologists, social workers, nurses and pharmacists work in clinics alongside family doctors. In addition, programs and groups are offered at the RDPCN central location. This improves access to care, health promotion, chronic disease management and coordination of care. RDPCN is proud of the patient care offered, the effective programs it has designed and the work it does with partners in health care and the community. www.reddeerpcn.com

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SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

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Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

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Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

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