Barbados Today

Inspiring Healthy Lifestyles, in association with The Schools Against Non-Communicable Diseases, will be hosting an event in Queen’s Park, Bridgetown to curb the worrying trend of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) on the island.

Event Coordinator Gillian Hazelwood told Barbados TODAY the event dubbed Eating Healthy, Living More, A Healthy Lifestyle Event will be held on June 21 and 22 and was inspired by the island’s worrying NCD statistics.

“We are quite alarmed with the statistics in Barbados with obesity, diabetes, stroke, [and] heart attack so we decided to do something holistic and have this health and wellness event. For me personally, I would have lost weight, over 110 pounds, due to those concepts. I had Type 2 diabetes and I was able to reverse it due to just those two things – eating healthy and moving more. People think it is not doable, but it is very feasible by changing your diet and increasing the amount of movement,” she said.

Hazelwood said school children are invited to attend the event on June 21. There will be stalls from various health groups such as The Diabetes Association, The Maria Holder Diabetes Association, The Cancer Society, The Lymphoma/Leukemia Foundation and The Hope Association.

However, she encouraged Barbadians who have not been tested for diabetes to take the opportunities offered at the event to be screened.

“We know that one in every five persons in Barbados has diabetes and obviously, that would be those who have been tested. Obviously, there are a lot of persons in Barbados walking about with diabetes that may not know that they have it. So, we are encouraging persons to come out to the event and get tested,” she said.

Hazelwood added that there will also be activities promoting physical activity. “What we are looking to do is to bring on a lot of the sporting associations that the children would not get to see and introduce them to various sports,” she said.

The Event Coordinator added there would also be a dietitian and nutritionist on board to educate students to make more informed choices with their diet.

“I can remember when I was going to school, we did not have enough information on health and wellness, on nutrition, how food works with the body and how food is fuel for the body and how food is not to be abused. So, it is a meaningful start if we can get them to start thinking differently about what they put into their body and let them see information on how sugar works with the body, how sugar drops your immunity every time you use it, how it makes you susceptible to more diseases going around… then knowledge is power. So, you can make a change from there as we need to change this current trajectory,” she said. (LG)