HEALTH : Comfort Zone for Diabetics : The SugarFree Center sells medicine, food and equipment. Support groups are free.

Elsbeth Goldberg, 72--one of the San Fernando Valley’s estimated 300,000 diabetics--considers the SugarFree Center in Van Nuys a special resource.

It is where she will attend her Nov. 12 diabetes support group meeting.

It is where she has her prescriptions filled.

It is also the place she goes for help in learning to use new equipment and to find what’s new in the diabetes field.

“The people there are like a support system for me,” Goldberg says.

The SugarFree Center at 13715 Burbank Blvd. looks like a one-story gray office complex from the outside. Inside, it looks like a mom-and-pop grocery store.

At the counter a customer, who has picked up some sugar-free candy and some other groceries, is now being shown how to use a Glucometer III system that measures blood sugar.

In the next room are the shelves of medicines that make up the full-service pharmacy.

This unique shop caters to the many needs of the diabetic; selling medicine, equipment, books, pamphlets and sugar-free food all in one place. But it’s what the center gives away that makes it special, according to customers and many Valley physicians.

Those giveaways include personal attention, the free support groups and a feeling of community, according to Goldberg, who lives in North Hollywood with her 14-year-old poodle named Teddy.

“It’s all important to me,” she says.

“Many hospitals offer support groups and other programs for the diabetic,” according to Mike Taylor, diabetics educator at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. What the SugarFree Center offers patients is a comfort zone, he adds.

“Doctors are pressed for time and patients often don’t feel comfortable asking too many questions. At the center they can drop in and ask as many questions as they like of the trained personnel,” Taylor says.

Goldberg’s diabetics specialist, Dr. Dan Honbo, on staff at Encino Medical Center, agrees with that diagnosis.

“I encourage patients to get into support groups where they feel comfortable,” he says.

Honbo adds that the SugarFree Center has trained personnel to answer questions and work with the diabetics.

“Some of the people working there are hospital-trained and others are diabetics themselves.”

Dr. David Kayne, like Honbo a diabetics specialist or diabetologist, is on the staff of the Diabetes Treatment Center at Tarzana Medical Center. He says he has sent many patients to the center because of the “fair pharmacy prices and because they are equipped to offer personalized service to diabetics.”

“We know about 400 of our customers by name,” says center manager Dan Chilton.

One of the clerks, Marilyn Kress, considers that figure low.

“The reason we are so familiar with our clients is because we handle their prescriptions, help them with equipment, work with their doctors and insurance carriers to carry out their program of treatment and see them at our support group meetings,” Kress says.

“And many customers come in once or twice a week to grocery shop or just to chat,” adds Kress, “or we might speak to them a couple of times a week on the phone.”

The store’s history begins in 1967 with two Valley College librarians.

It was the year one of the women, June Biermann, was found to have diabetes, at age 45.

She swears her doctor told her the fun was over, to give up everything she enjoyed.

“I loved good dining, traveling and being active in sports,” Biermann remembers. “My doctor told me all that was out.”

Biermann and her friend, housemate and fellow librarian, Barbara Toohey, decided to test almost everything about diabetics--including Biermann’s prognosis--that they had been told.

“I continued to exercise even though I was told not to. I learned that exercise lessened the amount of insulin I needed. I learned that urine tests for sugar in the blood were basically useless for active diabetics as well as older ones. I learned that many of the traditional beliefs just weren’t true,” Biermann said.

Biermann and Toohey published their findings. Their first book on the subject, published in 1969, was “The Peripatetic Diabetic.” Since then they have authored or co-authored with medical doctors 14 volumes, many of which are still in print.

The medical profession embraced the pair’s personal and empirical findings, probably because what the two were finding was being duplicated in the laboratories of famous universities.

It was, in short, that “there is no generic diabetic,” Biermann says.

“Every diabetic is different. It’s only through education and personal research you can learn how to deal with your own,” she wrote.

It wasn’t long before Biermann and Toohey were regular speakers before such groups as the American Diabetic Assn., and the American Assn. of Diabetic Educators, as well.

The pair first set up a mail-order service for their books in their garage, which lasted a few months, but then they were forced to pack up the service and move.

“People were banging on our doors wanting books at all hours,” Toohey remembers.

The SugarFree Center was born.

“First we leased the building on Burbank and then we bought it,” Toohey says.

Where to Go Location: The SugarFree Center, 13715 Burbank Blvd., Van Nuys. Call: (818) 994-1093.