This First Nations chef went into a diabetic coma at 21. Now he teaches healthy traditional cooking

Kirk Ermine was 21 years old when he fell into his first diabetic coma. At the time, he didn't know what was going on.

The first doctor he saw did blood work, but didn't test for diabetes. The second doctor assumed some sores on Ermine's mouth were connected to an STI outbreak in Prince Albert, Sask., where he was living at the time.

In reality, the symptoms were from Type 1 diabetes.

Some signs of diabetes include extreme exhaustion, sores that don't heal quickly, frequent urination and infections, extreme thirst and blurry vision.

Ermine was finally diagnosed after he experienced exhaustion so extreme he couldn't get out of bed and had to be rushed to hospital. His blood sugars were nearly 10 times higher than they should have been.

"It took them about nine days to bring my sugars down to normal," he said. "In that time I ended up in a coma."

Doctors told him he had juvenile Type 1 diabetes. He has been insulin-dependent ever since.

Type 1 diabetes is a condition in which the pancreas does not produce any insulin, a hormone that helps our bodies control the sugar in our blood.

About 10 per cent of people living with diabetes have Type 1. The other 90 per cent have Type 2 diabetes, which is more common in older adults. It's also becoming more common due to obesity, but it can be prevented or postponed with lifestyle changes, such as limiting fat and sugar intake, exercising more and not smoking.

Both types of diabetes are also more prevalent among Indigenous populations. According to Diabetes Canada, rates of Type 1 and 2 diabetes are 17.2 per cent in First Nations people living on reserve, and 12.7 per cent for those living off reserve, compared to about five per cent of the general population. Nearly 10 per cent of Métis people are diabetic.

Ermine was born and raised in Sturgeon Lake First Nation. He admits his diet was not the best.

"Eating convenience foods — the Kraft dinners, the ramen noodles, a lot of breads — a lot of hollow carbs that really turn into sugars when they're in your body," Ermine said.

After his diagnosis, he became more interested in how food can affect us. He started to notice that people used food to either harm or heal their bodies, depending on their emotional state.

"So when we're harming ourselves, we tend to go for the fast foods, the comfort foods, something that's going to get into us quickly," Ermine said. "But we don't realize the high cholesterol, the high salt, the high sugars that we're putting in our bodies. And that's like sugar bombing our pancreas."