Set the pace with NBA legend Abdul-Jabbar’s ‘walkathon’ to combat diabetes

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  • Cutting it out: Children were encouraged to lead healthy lifestyles.

    For the past seven years, the Imperial College London Diabetes Centre (ICLDC) has held the UAE’s leading annual walkathon, aptly named The Walk.

    What started as an event with less than 3,000 participants has blossomed into a full-fledged awareness campaign that sends the message of the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle to com­bat diabetes, to close to 200,000 people.

    Last year, 20,000 participants took part in The Walk and even more are expected to take part in next week’s edition, on November 7, at Yas Marina Circuit.

    Spearheading the initiative is the ICLDC’s CEO Bashar Al Ramahi who invited NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to help him raise awareness and conduct educa­tional talks on the importance of exercising and eating healthy in order to prevent diabetes.

    As part of the Take a Step for Diabetes Week with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, yesterday (Wednes­day), the ICLDC held its first ever walkathon in Al Ain, where the bas­ketball star first spoke to students from three different schools about how they can lead healthy lifestyles before he led a walkathon around the Abu Dhabi Municipality.

    “The fact that they’re having problems with diabetes here, it means something to me, because my mother had old age onset of diabetes and it sped up her death, so I know how it can impact an individual or family,” Abdul-Jabbar told Sport360°.

    “And here it has impacted the whole country. So I like what they’re trying to get done and I want to lend some support.”

    The 218cm American is one of the NBA’s all-time greats and was most famous for his longevity, with his career spanning 20 seasons.

    “The message I wanted to convey to the kids today is that how they start out their life in relation to diet and exercise routine, the things that interest them and that they pursue every day, that will deter­mine their health for the rest of their lives,” the 67-year-old added.

    “So they have to understand what’s important and how to do it. So showing them how to eat, what makes a good exercise routine, goes a long way in making that happen.”

    Al Ramahi explains how the centre’s initiative revolves around the premise that diabetes can be prevented irrespective of a person’s predisposition for it and that instilling the habit of walking across the country’s population can significantly help combat the disease.

    “This is our eighth year. It’s a very important initiative. It concentrates on the importance of walking because it’s something that anybody can do with any fit­ness level and at any age and it’s highly beneficial. It can be done anywhere, whether you’re at a park, at work, a shopping mall… And research has shown that if you walk 30 minutes a day with a good balanced diet, your chances of contracting diabetes goes down by 58 per cent,” said Al Ramahi.

    “Diabetes is a big problem, not only in the UAE, it’s a regional problem.

    “If you look at the top-15 coun­tries with a prevalence of diabetes, five of them are GCC countries.

    “With Saudi Arabia coming No1 at about 24 per cent, the UAE we have a prevalence of almost 19 per cent which is extremely high for a relatively young population.

    “So it is a problem, it needs to be addressed, it’s costly on the long-run, because usually a person with diabetes will cost the healthcare system three times as much as a person without diabetes. Not to mention the loss of productivity. And it’s preventable, it doesn’t have to happen.

    “Even if somebody has the ge­netic predisposition, having family members with diabetes, they don’t have to say ‘that’s it I’m doomed, I’m going to get it’.

    “No. With the right lifestyle, you don’t have to get it.”

    Al Ramahi spoke about the difference of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes and how the latter, which is prevalent in the UAE, is the one directly related to lifestyle.

    “Type 1 is not related to lifestyle, it’s an auto-immune disease where the body attacks the pancreas and it stops working and that usually is prevalent with children,” he says.

    “With that, we are not higher than the international benchmark, but we are higher in the Type 2 dia­betes which is related to lifestyle.

    “We have a problem with obesity, the UAE ranks No4 in the world in obesity, and with obesity comes many chronic diseases, one of them is definitely diabetes.

    “People need to eat better, lead a more active lifestyle and to basi­cally get educated about the risk of diabetes, how to spot it and prevent it in any way possible.”

    Asked why he thought Abdul-Jabbar was a good fit for this event, he added: “Kareem has been very helpful. We asked him to join us and he didn’t hesitate for a minute.

    “He had a very long career in basketball, he’s an ambassador for healthy lifestyle and at the time when players were retiring at the age of 30 because sports medi­cine wasn’t as great as it is today, Kareem retired at the age of 43 and was still playing at a very high level.

    “That’s because of the lifestyle that he maintained, his training regimen.

    “So I couldn’t think of anybody better than Kareem to give that message.

    “Especially that right now he is at an age where he is still in very good shape and can connect to the risk age groups of 40 to 60.”

    #TheWalk2014 will take place on November 7 at 17:00 at Yas Marina Circuit. Registration can be com­pleted at yasmarinacircuit.com.

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