Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 9, Number 10, 1 ʻOkakopa 1992 — Ola kino o nā Hawaiʻi [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Ola kino o nā Hawaiʻi

Hawaiian healih horizons

The Wai'anae Diet moves to Windward Waimanalo

by Pearl Leialoha Page The Hawai'i state Legislature anei the Office of Hawaiian Affairs have allocated matching funds to initiate the Wai'anae Diet in Waimānalo. The $60,000 pilot program is expected to begin in midJanuary with about 25 participants for the 21-day program. The staff of the Wai'anae Coast Comprehensive Health Center will be monitoring the program as well as training the Waimānalo Health Center staff in administering the diet among Hawaiians with hypertension and diabetes, as well as those who are substantially healthy. The pilot group will be required to meet twice a day, morning and evening for regular nutrition education, cultural reinforcement and to share two meals together. The initial group will continue using the diet until personal goals are met, while a second group of 25 begins with supervision from the newly trained Waimānalo staff. "We already have a list of nearly 200 people who want to use the Wai'anae Diet," says Kawahine Kamakea-'Ohelo, the center's executive director. The diet consists mainly of traditional and non-traditional foods high in carbohydrates. Taro, rice, sweet potato, grains, fruits, and vegetables make up about 78 percent of the diet. Protein, mostly from fish and a little ehieken, accounts for 12 percent. Fats from fish, ehieken and coconut make up the remaining 1 0 percent. But this diet is mueh more than its simple components. It is a starting plaee for recovering pono, or

harmony. It was this harmony that built the robust health enjoyed by the ancient Hawaiians, who saw themselves related to everything in the cosmos, according to Tbe Wai'anae Book of Hawaiian Health. The book also recounts the first impressions Westerners had of the Hawaiian people. "Tall, thin, with muscular limbs; capable of bearing great fatigue" are some of their descriptions. Reclaiming that birthright is what the diet is all about. It's about returning to the ways of the kūpuna in areas of diet, spiritual awareness and use of the mind to create the desired result.

The diet has achieved astounding results. Participants average a weight loss of 17 pounds in 21 days, a decrease in cholesterol levels by 14 percent, blood pressure decreases of 9 percent for systolic and 1 1 percent for diastolic pressure, and blood sugar controls improved with four out of nine insulin users becoming normal and discontinuing medication within the first six to 12 days of the program. Leilani Sexton is one of the people behind those numbers. Her doctor was threatening her wilh the use of insulin injections to control her diabetes. She has successfully avoided injections and no longer needed blood pressure pills after the first week on the program. After nearly a year, Sexton reports a weight loss of 100 lbs. "I used to be size 52 and could only wear 5X mu'umu'u or the sheet off the bed. Now I wear size 24," she said. Her friends comment that she looks 10 years younger.

Kawahine Kamakea-'Ohelo is hoping for similar results at the Waimānalo Health Center. "You're 1ooking at a community that's 20 years behind Wai'anae, but they've slowly started to wake up," Kamakea-'Ohelo said. That sense of self-reliance is driving the changes at the health center itself. The state-operated center is slowly turning over control to a eommuni-ty-based health service operated primarily by Hawaiians, Kamakea'Ohelo said. "What we want to do is make this a family-oriented health center, instead of one solely for women and children," she said. Adult services began in February and the group took over maternity

and pediatric care Sept. 1. It has kept the name and added the motto: ola Hāloa; the sustaining of life in the traditional ways. Dr. Edward G. Briscoe serves as medical director, and three other doctors have contracted to provide services within the center's $370,000 annual budget, she said. The services offered here will be more sensitive and appropriate to Hawaiians, she stressed. According to the 1990 census just over 50 percent of the population in Waimānalo are Hawaiian or partHawaiian, and the center is projecting for 14,000 visits annually. Its board members are consumers of the center whose main mandate is to serve the needy. Fees are

determined on an ability-to-pay-method. Kamakea-'Ohelo reports that roughly 57 percent of the eenter's patients are without health insurance and half of these are partHawaiian. The health center's board hopes to integrate traditional Hawaiian healing practices into its array of services onee the transition is eompleted. It is also looking at assisting the development of a farmer's market to make native Hawaiian foods more readily available. Future-looking goals include developing a women's center for healing and sharing as well as a family education center to serve as a community gathering plaee. Kamakea-'Ohelo sees these as important steps to uplift the eommunity's health. "They all eontribute to the wellness of the family, the wholeness of the person and the rebuilding of a community. This is what we're trying to recapture."

Some of the Hawaiian faces offering sensitive service to the Waimanalo community, seated is Kawahine Kamakea-'Ohelo, executive director; Lucy Leimomi Centeio, receptionist; Jolene Lono, student nurse; Jon Gasper, medical student.