good morning. welcome to "viewpoint." i'm pat lawson muse. women carry a lot of weight. not just pounds. a lot of responsibility, balancing finances, family, work, health and so many other issues. to manage all of that successfully, a woman needs to be well. and that can be a challenge. our topic this morning is women's wellness. my guests are dr. renee bevell who practices in glendale, maryland. dr. patricia davidson is a cardiologist with the washington hospital center. and rev represented dr. gertty hurley and founder and executive director of the group taking effective action. thank you all for being with us this morning. you are gearing up for a big

wellness celebration, a celebration of birthdays and women's wellness that takes place next saturday at prince george's community college. tell us about it. what's the focus going to be, reverend hurley? >> the focus is on teaching women how to take charge of their health and celebrate their birthday. and in doing so, they'll have better birthdays moving forward as they grow older. >> and more birthdays. >> can be productive and not just in a nursing home. >> yes. it's a celebration that nbc 4 is partnering with you on. and this is a continuation. obesity is a big issue in our communities. dr. davidson, maryland has the 29th highest adult obesity rate in the nation. that's pretty high. why is it so high in the state of maryland? >> well, part of it is we have a large african-american

population and a large latino population. women of color have the tendency to have the largest weight, over 68% of both latino and african-american women will be overweight. and that comes from a whole host of reasons starting off with stress, stress and racism that ends up resulting in eating poorly, poverty rates, food deserts where we do not have appropriate food in our communities. we have too many fast food restaurants and food that promotes heart disease and die beat and hy diabetes and hypertension. when you have higher poverty rates, you really can't focus on wellness. you end up focusing on just survival. and we know our poverty rates going up and our need for food especially in children is going up. so what kind of food do you think these children are accessing who do not have adequate food in their homes? so there's a whole lot of reasons why we're going to see even more obesity in the next few years.

>> before bevell, you practice in prince george's county which has some of the state's highest obesity rates. how many of your patients think about their weight and their eyes and the connection there? >> you know, not enough. and the eyes can manifest problems with obesity by diabetes. there could be problems with diabetes, and that leads to r retinopathy which can lead to blandness. my patients don't think about that. what i try and get the patients to understand is that we can effect the change ourselves. you don't always have to wait for the doctor. and if you eat healthfully, if you're able to, in spite of the food deserts that dr. davidson mentioned, if you're confined a way, then you can effect change in your health. >> reverend hurley, dr. davidson

touched on some of the reasons that obesity is such a big problem in maryland and in prince george's county, but you know, there have been so many efforts, and there's been such a push to help people recognize that they need to eat healthier diets and exercise, get moving. and basically improve their lifestyles. is there a certain level of denial that takes place in our communities, or are women too busy taking care of everybody else in their lives? >> it's a combination of all of those. it's women actually are very busy. and their health for some reason is -- they put it on the back burner. and they just feel like caretakers for just everything. >> well, they are. we are. >> they feel like that's all they can do and they don't have time to exercise. they don't have time to eat healthy, just sit and be quiet because many have come to me crying, thanking me for getting them on the track to look at their health because they just want to take care of everyone else.

>> dr. davidson, let's talk about heart disease because heart disease is a sneaky disease. very deadly. the number one cause of death in women. >> that's correct, everyone in america, all;q=h ethnic groups. >> the symptoms are different in women and men so let's review those basics. >> well, the number one symptom is going to be discomfort. and people need to recognize that heart disease is not painful. so if you're looking for labor to hit you in the chest, you're going to end up staying home and having a heart attack complete itself and have significant damage to your heart. so the first thing is it is not painful. it feels just like indigestion. since your stomach -- you can also have shortness of breath and fatigue and some back discomfort, arm, neck, jaw discomfort as well. you may just have sweating.

cholesterol plaque begins to build from the time you are in the fetal state if your mother has high cholesterol when she's carrying you. if not, then by the time you are 10 in this country which is a diet that leads to heart disease and stroke, if you're eating the usual american diet, you're going to start having cholesterol plaque by the time you are 10. and that begins to grow over each decade. now, fatigue is very critical. estrogen, which is something that protects women, is a good thing for the artery walls so it slows the production of the cholesterol plaque from forming for another decade or two. that's why men have their heart attacks around 50 and women have them at 60 and 70. unless they smoke or become diabetic, then all bets are off and they start having their heart attacks earlier. but it is a very, very slow process. that is not natural. people think that they're supposed to die from heart attacks and strokes. the atherscloretomy.

now you can't shop anymore because you're too tired and feeling out of sorts, you most likely have clogged arteries. >> we've got to take a break. we'll continue this talk about women's health right after this. ring ring! progresso! you soup people have my kids loving vegetables. well vegetables... shh!

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welcome back. we are talking about women's wellness this morning. we were just talking about women's hearts. dr. bevell, we were talking about stress. and you know, women need to go to the doctor and know their numbers. >> that's right. >> but you pointed out during the break that a lot of people in the african-american community have a little trouble with the doctors. they don't trust them? >> that's right. i think that there may be a

mistrust. there may be a cultural mistrust of physicians, and this may stem back to years ago when we had the tuskegee health incidents. and sometimes people may feel that they're getting medication, and it's more for the physician's benefit rather than for their benefit. so we have to find a way to reach out to our patients and let them know that we care about them. and we are their health advocates. we can work as their health coach. and we are on their side. >> reverend hurley, how much of it is just taking the time to slow down and smell the flowers? >> well, that's true. that's part of it, but another part of it could be off what dr. bevell said. a lot of people came to me and

said they didn't think that all those tests were doctor ordered and they go to another doctor who does something different. and maybe the doctor they left was trying to do something to help them. >> we can't overemphasize enough, dr. davidson, the importance of knowing your numbers, knowing your blood pressure and knowing your glucose level. >> that's the most important thing. we have lots of fancy tests to determine how much clog you have in your arteries. i think the most important thing is that if you have rick factri factors, you have clogged arteries, whether it's a small amount or large amount. everybody should first look at their numbers. most people are going to a church fair and they can find their numbers there. your sugar should be under 100, fasting. your blood pressure ideally should be under 120 and under 80. your bad cholesterol should be well under 100, ideally under 70 because we know that you were born with an ldl, that's the bad

cholesterol, of somewhere around 30. and the further away we get from 30, the more likely we'll end up having clogged arteries. so if you n't have an ldl that's low because you've been eating so many animals and they're made of cholesterol and you're made of cholesterol. so your liver is not metabolizing all of that cholesterol. the amount of animals that you dump onto your liver will determine whether your liver can handle it. so if you see an ldl over 100, then your liver is on strike and saying i can't do your cholesterol and the other animals so then you know you have clogged arteries. if your body mass index is over 25, you're going to die from your weight. so you work to get that down. so if you don't like fancy tests, then work to get all of your risk factors in order. >> and you're saying eat less meat. >> well, if your ldl is over 100, then your liver is on strike and cannot metabolize all your cholesterol.

and most importantly, just exercising with walking 30 minutes a day, seven days a week is a 50% reduction in heart attack, stroke and cancer. >> that's really easy to do. >> there's just three things you need to do in life if you want to prevent 80% of the diseases that we acquire. stay thin. walk. and don't smoke. and you will end up having 80% less of all the diseases that we have in this country. >> can you just talk for a moment about how heart disease rates compare in hispanic and asian women? >> that's a perfect example. asian women are the healthiest women in america. they don't smoke and they're thin. whether they walk or not, i don't know. at least they don't smoke and they're thin. and they have the least amount of cancer and heart disease in this country. and latino women are not ho homogenous. african-american womte puerto rican and cuban women

tend to be a little bit healthier. so you're going to have a population that mirrors that of african-american women. and because of the obesity rate, you're going to have higher diabetes, higher hypertension, higher clogged arteries, higher cholesterol. and less exercise. so then you'll have the highest rate of heart disease. and african-american women have the highest death rate from heart disease and a lot of that is lack of prevention and lack of treatment and diagnosis because it's a tremendous both cultural bias within the medical profession, racial bias and gender bias that exists so we end up being diagnosed less and prevented less. >> we're talking about the wellness celebration that's going to take place this coming saturday. we'll show you the website address and we'll be back to talk more about your eyes. stay with us.

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most common eye diseases in women? >> well, in african-american women, one of the most common diseases is glaucoma. also, what's very common, unfortunately, is diabetic retinopathy, and that's definitely related to what we eat. we can also see heart disease can be manifested in the eye. and in the front of the eye in the cornea, you can actually sometimes see what we call arcus, that's a white ring that forms around the outside of the eye, especially in people in younger people, if you have that, that can be a sign of high cholesterol. >> can you look in the mirror at your eyes and figure out whether there's something wrong? >> yes. if you get close, you may have to put on your reading glasses, but you see a white ring around your eye. if you have brown eyes like i do, you see a white ring around that. that's a sign that you should see your ophthalmologist and also see your primary care doctor and get your cholesterol checked. >> let's get back to diet for

just a moment and lifestyle, reverend hurley. you suggested during the break that maybe, you know, finding a nutritionist would help a lot of people. but how many african-americans are going to go find a nutritionist? >> not many, although a lot of health plans have nutritionists deductible. you know, your health insurance policy will pay for you to see a nutritionist, but they just won't do it. they won't go. >> at the celebration on saturday, i assume you'll have some cooking demonstrations? >> dr. davidson and one of her assistants will be doing a food demonstration. she did one last year. we also have awe nutritionist there who will be showing the right portions to eat and all of those things and how much fat and sugar food has. >> dr. davidson, most people i know like what they like and many associate healthy food with food that doesn't taste good. that's not true. >> no, it's not true. and chefs show us that all the time how you can spice up food.

i think people need to decide whether what they're eating is worth dying for. we have food that keeps us alive, and we have food that kills us. and you have to make a decision that if what you put in your mouth is worth dying for, then go on and eat it. if you don't wish to have a disease, and food creates disease. and we know which foods create diseases. and you just need to eat the food in the form that doesn't create disease. like you do not have to eat the carbohydrate in the refined form in terms of all the nutrient taken out. you need to eat it in its more natural form so you don't get rid of the vitamins and the minerals. so if you insist on eating something purely for taste, then you also have to accept the consequences which will be disease and earlier death and a bag full of medicine. >> a cdc study shows americans' waistlines are expanding and that women are gaining more inches around their waist than men. at the same time, obesity rates

in the country pretty much remained steady. how do you account for something like that? >> well, as we reach menopause, we end up gaining most of our weight in our abdomen area. but that's very critical. and that's another number that you need to know. and the number's not the same. women of color need to be thinner than women from european origin. so your waist size should be under 35 inches and 40 for men. for african-american women and other women of color, it should be 31.5. and for african-american and men of color it should be 37. we have noticed worldwide that women of color will have their diabetes and other diseases associated with a waist size that's over 31.5 as opposed to that of european women. just measuring your waist will tell you. and fat around the organs especially the pancreas which regulates your sugar will end up leading to diabetes. that's another thing that you have to do. you have to start exercising, doing abdominal exercises and

you see the things that the trainers on tv show what they call the ab exercises. that's another thing that will help significantly reduce disease. >> reverend hurley, a lot of churches have exercise programs and have started wellness programs. how important are they in helping to change the culture? >> they are very important because a lot of african-americans live in prince george's county. and they have a lot of things -- activities where they serve food. and it's not always healthy. we're working with a lot of churches to help with that. and we have some churches who are actually participating in the event. faith united ministries in district heights, maryland, they are providing volunteers and new beginnings community church, they're providing help as well to make sure the message gets out to everyone. >> all right. we'll continue to talk about that message in just a minute. stay with us.

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welcome back. dr. bevell, if you can incorporate one healthy change, how much of an impact will just making small changes have on your eyes and on your overall health? >> it can have a huge impact. you know, people don't realize that you can get what we call a heart attack in the eye. you can get a stroke in the eye. the heart attack in the eye is called a central retinal artery inclusion. and when that happens, unlike a heart attack, there's really no chance, really, of gaining vision back. so these kinds of changes can make huge impact. we can actually see a cholesterol, a flick of cholesterol in the veins, in the arteries, in the eyes. >> is there a difference, reverend hurley, between educating and convincing people to make better choices and

empowering them to do so? >> well, it's how you do it. you just ease up on them. and through demonstration, through actions. it'skñh] a good way to set an example because whenever i eat, people come around and say, what? oh, what is that? can i taste that? because i don't eat meat. and i don't advocate that everybody shouldn't eat meat. i just don't. it's working for me under dr. davidson's care. she's my physician. and that's what's happening with it. they just need to have someone just convince them a little bit. just baby steps, as dr. davidson has already said. >> so are you going to do a lot of that on saturday, and you've got a lot of partners working with you? >> yes. and specifically, we have to give acknowledgment and thanks to boston scientific close the gap program and again the churches new beginning community church and faith united ministries. and giant food. wegman's and prince george's

community college who are allowing us to have it there and are partnering with us. >> will you address mental health, domestic violence and those kinds of issues? >> yes. we're going to address a little bit about the domestic violence and family violence that's going on right now. we have some information to give out to people about it. >> dr. davidson, final word about maintaining overall health. keeping the stress level down. >> well, everything's preventable. and meditation, prayer, walking is the simplest and cheapest thing you can do. and trying to do some minor changes in your diet and then try to move on with some more major changes. and really finding out about all your risk factors. and not one thing, but if you find out what your risk factors are and you see what you're capable of tackling and just go for a walk, meditate or pray and that will reduce your stress levels and all kinds of horrible hormones that help form plaque. >> all right. >> you need to begin, wellness is about trying to prevent

disease. >> all right, dr. patricia davidson, dr. bevell and gertie hurley. thank you all. we'll see you on satuay. and thank you. like my homemade. it's our slow simmered vegetables and tender white meat chicken. apology accepted. i'm watching you soup people. make it progresso or make it yourself. you say avocado old el paso says... zesty chicken and avocado tacos in our stand 'n stuff tortillas . (record scratch) you say stand n' stuff tortillas old el paso says... start somewhere fresh

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