South Asian women get diabetes at higher rates. A Northwestern study aims to fight those stats with exercise.

Like many moms, Asmita Patel has struggled to find time to exercise in recent years.

Between working, taking care of her children, taking care of her relatives, and taking her children to activities, she didn’t get much exercise. That changed, however, last month when Niles’ wife and her 13-year-old daughter joined a clinical trial at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine focused on getting South Asian women, who have high rates of diabetes and other ailments, exercised more.

Now, Patel and her daughter participate in weekly Zoom exercise classes and discussions on culture, exercise and health with other South Asian mothers and daughters from the Chicago area.

“I wanted to make sure I was healthy so it would help me throughout my life, and I can also teach my children, as they get older, to understand,” said Patel, who moved to the US from India about 15 years ago. years. years ago.

Patel and her daughter are among 60 mother-daughter pairs who are part of the ongoing community clinical trial, which Dr. Namratha Kandula began about three years ago. She and other researchers embarked on the project hoping to find a way to address the high rates of diabetes, gestational diabetes, and cardiovascular problems among South Asian women in the US.

About 23.3% of people from South Asia in a nationally representative survey of American adults had diabetes between 2011 and 2016, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. By comparison, 12.1% of whites, 20.4% of blacks and 22.1% of Hispanics surveyed had diabetes during that same time.

The researchers don’t fully understand why people in South Asia have such high rates of diabetes, but say several factors may be to blame.

South Asians carry a different weight than other groups, more often around the abdomen than in the legs or hips, said Kandula, a professor of medicine and preventive medicine at Feinberg. It may also be due to foods popular among South Asian cultures. They also may not get much exercise.

Reasons for not exercising vary, especially depending on South Asian culture, Kandula said. South Asians are a diverse group hailing from countries such as Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan.

“South Asian women and girls face very different barriers to being able to exercise and be physically active,” said Kandula.

Depending on the culture, some South Asian women may not want to wear indelicate workout clothes in public, or feel self-conscious about going to the gym in traditional clothing.

Some may not want to go to a class that resembles dancing. In the study, a group of South Indian Muslim women opted not to have music during their training classes, Kandula said.

There’s also a belief in some South Asian cultures that the only reason to exercise is to lose weight, so thin people don’t need to go to the gym, Kandula said.

Still, there is perhaps an even more common reason many South Asian women don’t exercise more: lack of time.

Shazia Fazal, of Rogers Park, said she didn’t think much of her health before joining the study. She was too busy taking care of her children, her husband and her home, she said. She was eventually told that she had prediabetes.

She learned through the studio’s exercise classes and discussions that it’s important to take time to take care of your own health, she said.

“We spend all day with those things and we don’t have time for ourselves,” said Fazal, who moved to the United States from Pakistan about 20 years ago. “We should have time for ourselves too. We just do those things and forget about them.”

Exercise may not be a priority for many people in South Asia, especially those who were immigrants, because they are so focused on education and supporting their families, to make sure their children have the kind of life that motivated them. to move to the US in the first place, Kandula said.

“I think South Asians work hard,” said Shabana Saleem of Skokie, who is involved in the study. “They don’t take time for themselves. They think they can earn money here and they work hard because they are earning money for their children.”

The study aims to see if offering exercise classes and discussions for South Asian women and their daughters increases long-term physical activity, increases women’s confidence to exercise, and increases communication between mothers and daughters about health and physical activity.

For the study, half of the participants are placed in an intervention group, in which the mothers participate in exercise classes twice a week and the daughters, ages 11 to 16, once a week, and also participate in Zoom group discussions. Classes and discussions last 18 weeks. The other mother-daughter pairs are placed in a control group, receiving only pamphlets about the importance of exercise.

Researchers measure the physical activity levels of mothers and daughters through wearable monitors, taking their blood pressure and weight before school starts, after school ends, and again a year after school ends. joined the study for the first time.

The Skokie Park District, Skokie Health Department, Metropolitan Asian Family Services, and Skokie-Morton Grove School District 69 are partnering with Northwestern on the study, helping to recruit participants and providing input on the design of the study. research.

“Our health is the lowest priority, it’s the last thing on our minds,” said Subia Javed, a District 69 family liaison, who has been helping recruit study participants and coordinate activities. “This is really important to encourage them and make them physically active, otherwise we have diabetes and heart problems at a young age.”

Saleem, a study participant, said that since she started taking the classes, she has lost weight and her health has improved. He has also enjoyed exercise classes with his 13-year-old daughter, his youngest daughter, who is otherwise usually busy.

“We got the link,” Saleem said. I can spend my time with her.

Fazal’s daughter, Rania Zubair, 15, said she enjoys spending time with her mother and being physically active, especially after becoming “lazy” during the height of COVID-19.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Zubair said. Exercise is important for physical and mental health, he said.

Fazal said that since he started classes his cholesterol level has gone down. Studying gave her and her daughter a reason to exercise, knowing they were expected to attend class every week. She held them accountable and helped them think about the importance of staying physically active, she said.

“Before, I didn’t think much about my health,” Fazal said. “Through this class, we were much more active than before.”