The awareness of diabetes - a disease considered as an epidemic due to its great incidence, since it suffers more than 5 million Spaniards and 387 million people around the world - will have a leading role in the cycling return to Navarra on April 4 andIn the Cyclist return to La Rioja the next day with the participation, for the first time in both tests, of Team Novo Nordisk.
This is the only professional cycling team in the world composed in its entirety by athletes with type 1 diabetes. Among its 18 members, from 11 countries, are the Spaniards Javier Megías and David Lozano.The objectives of Team Novo Nordisk are to serve as an example for people with diabetes so that they are aware that, with individualized monitoring and properly structured nutrition, they can perform any physical activity, however demanding, as well as foster sports in sports inGeneral, since it helps prevent the disease and control it among those who already suffer.
The team is sponsored by the company Novo Nordisk, world leader in research and diabetes treatment.Property of a non -profit foundation, the activity of Novo Nordisk goes far beyond medicine, being involved annually in hundreds of initiatives that, under the common denomination Changing Diabetes®, seek to improve the quality of life of people with diabetes:Sports sponsorships, prevention and awareness campaigns, training activities, studies on the psychological impact of the disease, collaboration with international organizations and governments, etc.
The Team Novo Nordisk competes in the continental professional category of the International Cycling Union.Since its creation in December 2012, it has participated in more than 100 tests and its members have traveled more than 20,000 kilometers in 23 countries, making their message to thousands of people.This is revealed by the fact that they have more than one million followers on their official Facebook page.
According to Dr. Rafael Castol, medical director of Team Novo Nordisk, “physical activity and exercise are essential components in any person's life to maintain an optimal state of health.The benefits of exercise in the management and prevention of chronic-methabolic diseases and decreased cardiovascular risk factors have been widely demonstrated in scientific literature.For cyclists of the Novo Nordisk team, in addition to these benefits, professional sport represents a constant challenge to find the proper balance between the optimal management of their blood glucose levels and individualized nutrition that allows them to compete at the highest level withoutDiabetes is a condition that affects their performance.
A HISTORY OF OVERCOMING
The story of Team Novo Nordisk dates back to 1982, when its co-founder and current CEO, Phil Southerland, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at seven months of age.From the age of 12, Phil began to run by bicycle as a way to contribute to the control of his illness and, in 2005, he created the Team Type 1, a team composed of cyclists with and without diabetes.That same year, Novo Nordisk launched its Changing Diabetes® program and, over time, it was exclusively sponsored to which it has since known as Team Novo Nordisk.
“All the team members - the Spanish David Lozano, born in 1988 and diagnosed at age 22 - are like any other athlete.We simply have to learn to know each other better, be more disciplined and anticipate our own body, with an eye always put in the next hour and in what we must do in it, either eat more or less or administer our medication.In other words, turn our head intoOur pancreas.In fact, we end up seeing diabetes as a disease and we think about it as in a life condition. ”
His partner, the also Spanish Javier Megías, born in 1983 and diagnosed at 14 years of age, has been living with diabetes for so long that, he says, “today I almost don't realize that I suffer from it.I feel like any other athlete but more careful, especially to control my diabetes.In fact, it is not that diabetes has complicated my sports life but that, vice versa, sport has facilitated my coexistence with diabetes.Everyone should practice it, be it cycling or other alternative. ”
