Type 2 Diabetes: What Is It?
Diabetes is a disease that affects how the body uses glucose , the main type of sugar in the blood. Our bodies break down the foods we eat into glucose and other nutrients we need, which are then absorbed into the bloodstream from the gastrointestinal tract. The glucose level in the blood rises after a meal and triggers the pancreas to make the hormone insulin and release it into the bloodstream. But in people with diabetes, the body either can't make or can't respond to insulin properly. Insulin works like a key that opens the doors to cells and lets the glucose in. Without insulin, glucose can't get into the cells (the doors are "locked" and there is no key) and so it stays in the bloodstream. As a result, the level of sugar in the blood remains higher than normal. High blood sugar levels are a problem because they can cause a number of health problems. The two types of diabetes are type 1 and type 2. Both make blood sugar levels higher than normal but they do so in different ways. Type 1 diabetes happens when the immune system attacks and destroys the cells of the pancreas that produce insulin. Kids with type 1 diabetes need insulin to help keep their blood sugar levels in a normal range. Type 2 diabetes is different. A person with type 2 diabetes still produces insulin but the body doesn't respond to it normally. Glucose is less able to enter the cells and do its job of supplying energy (a problem called insulin resistance ). This raises the blood sugar level, so the pancreas works hard to make even more insulin. Eventually, this strain can make the pancreas unable to produce enough insulin to keep blood sugar levels normal. People with insulin resistance may or may not develop type 2 diabetes it all depends on whether the pancreas can make enough insulin to keep b Continue reading >>
How Teens Deal With Type 1 Diabetes | Diabetes Teenagers Nsw
When you're active you usually find that you need some extra carbohydrate foods to top up your energy levels and stop you having a hypo. You might need extra carbohydrate foods before, during and after exercise. One extra carbohydrate exchange for every 30-40 minutes of exercise is a good guide. So don't forget to throw in some extra carbohydrate foods. Hypos can happen for 12-16 hours after you stop exercising, so keep an eye on your BGLs and top up your carbs if you need to. If you find that sport always drops your BGLs, talk to your diabetes team about changes you can make to your insulin dose that might help. Don't forget to pack a hypo kit with hypo foods for sport. Lots of takeaway foods can be high in fat and sugar. To be healthy, it's a good idea not to eat takeaways any more than once a week. When you choose takeaways, it's important to try and make the healthiest choices, look for lower fat takeaways like: A grilled chicken burger with lots of salad A small glass of wineIts not as much as you think!! Alcohol can make you do things you normally wouldn't - and when you've got diabetes there are other risks you need to know about! Increase the risk of hypos because it stops your liver from releasing glucose. Especially if youre out late, dancing or drink heaps. Make it more difficult for you to recognise the symptoms of a hypo - you may be mistaken for being drunk. Cause vomiting and dehydration which may lead to DKA (ketoacidosis) and a possible trip to hospital Make it easy for you to forget about looking after your diabetes Try and have dinner before you go out or head out for a meal before you start drinking Don't skip your insulin - talk to your doctor or diabetes educator about any changes that you might need to make to your dose if you're staying out late Continue reading >>
Resources For Children And Teens
When children or teens have diabetes, it is most often type 1 diabetes. However, type 2 diabetes is becoming more common in young people. Learn more about the differences between type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and find out how to lower the risk of your child or teen getting type 2 diabetes. Youth and Teens NDEP offers information about diabetes in children and teens as well as tools and resources to help them manage their diabetes. Managing Diabetes at School Playbook Resources to help parents make a game plan for their child’s diabetes care at school. Diabetes Resources for Schools Students with diabetes are more likely to succeed in school when the student’s school health team and the student’s personal diabetes health care team work together. Transitions: From Pediatric to Adult Health Care Transitioning from teenage years to adulthood can be stressful for teens with diabetes and their families. Visit this website to find materials to help teens with diabetes make a smooth transition to adult health care. Eagle Books The Eagle Books for children and youth were developed by CDC’s Native Diabetes Wellness Program in collaboration with the Tribal Leaders Diabetes Committee and the Indian Health Service. They use stories to teach about the joy of physical activity, eating healthy foods, and traditional ways of being healthy. Continue reading >>
Teen Mom Diabetes
ObjectivesOn completion of this module, learners will: Recognize the common complications of teen pregnancy and pregnancy with Type 1 diabetes mellitus Be able to create appropriate treatment and nutrition guidance for pregnant adolescents with Type 1 diabetes mellitus Assess the unique nutritional requirements of the exercising teenage female and relatedness to menstrual and bone abnormalities Appreciate both risks of Gestational Diabetes and Type 2 diabetes mellitus in teenage pregnancy, and importance of early prepregnancy/contraception counseling for diabetic adolescents This mini-module addresses unique characteristics of diabetes in teen pregnancy. It integrates material from Part IV Section 5f, Type 1 DM and 6c, Type 2 DM with additional information from the references provided below. The principle sources addressing the specific implications of diabetes mellitus in pregnant adolescents are: Carmody D, Doyle A, Firth RG, et al. Teenage pregnancy in type 1 diabetes mellitus. Pediatric Diabetes March 2010; 11(2):111-115 Karcaaltincaba D, Buyukkaragoz B, Kandemir O. Gestational diabetes and gestational impaired glucose tolerance in 1653 teenage pregnancies: prevalence, risk factors and pregnancy outcomes. Journal of Pediatric & Adolescent Gynecology. April 2011; 24(2):62-65. The work of Lenders and Scholl has informed many of the Teacher's Guide modules. A work of theirs used in preparation of this one is: Lenders CM, McElrath TF, Scholl TO. Nutrition in adolescent pregnancy. Current Opinion in Pediatrics from [email protected] June 2000; 12(3):291-296. Teen pregnancy has been on a steady decline over the past few decades and as of 2011, women of age 15-19 had a live birth rate of 31.3 per 1,000 women, which is an 8% drop since 2010.(1) Despite the decline, the United Continue reading >>
Screening Tests For Teens (ages 13-18)
Screening tests are laboratory tests that help to identify people with increased risk for a condition or disease before they have symptoms or even realize they may be at risk so that preventive measures can be taken. They are an important part of preventive health care. Screening tests help detect disease in its earliest and most treatable stages. Therefore, they are most valuable when they are used to screen for diseases that are both serious and treatable, so that there is a benefit to detecting the disease before symptoms begin. They should be sensitive - that is, able to correctly identify those individuals who have a given disease. Many routine tests performed at regular health exams are screening tests. Cholesterol testing and Pap smears for women are examples. Newborns are screened for a variety of conditions at birth. A positive screening test often requires further testing with a more specific test. This is important in order to correctly exclude those individuals who do not have the given disease or to confirm a diagnosis. A diagnostic test may be used for screening purposes, but a diagnostic test is generally used to confirm a diagnosis in someone who has signs, symptoms, or other evidence of a particular disease. This article waslast modified on October 7, 2019. Adolescents are often thought of as the healthiest age group. However, habits formed during the teen years will likely affect your teen's health well into adulthood. For example, helping an overweight or obese teen reduce his or her weight can prevent diabetes and heart disease in later years. For teens, annual "well care" visits don't involve many laboratory screening tests. Rather, the emphasis is on preparing for teen health issues, such as accident and injury prevention, sexual health, and avoid Continue reading >>
Mother Shares Her Child's Struggle With Type 1 Diabetes
This was me in high shool, but it extended through college. My college experience was a bad one as a result. In retrospect, I ended up with a math degree from an ivy league school, and have no complcations, but I nonetheless feel like I threw away four years of my life feeling awful, physically and emotionally, and I have no way of getting them back.I don't have any advice though...I knew what to do, I kept trying to make fresh starts, I just couldn't make myself do it. How honest !- Thank you for opening the door to conversation between parents, between parents and children, and for raising awareness that we must stay aware of and involved in our adolescent's diabetes care. Moira, this is an amazing post. And not just for moms and dads of T1s! As a PWD, I can say that - at 31 years old, after 16 years with T1 - I struggle every single day to find that balance between self-care and freedom. It's the biggest problem I think diabetics face, and is why doctors all cluck their tongues about "compliance."When you never get a break from something like this, when you never get a day off or a moment to think about something else (because the D is always, always, always there), it is hard to maintain the energy and commitment required to take care of yourself. The diabetes wagon is horrifically slippery - I know I've spent all these years hopping on it and falling right back off. It's work. It's not fun. It can be draining. And I know I can have a lot of resentment about the fact that this is what I have to spend a lot of my time and emotional energy on.Thanks for your post - Lauren sounds like a smart, tough cookie, and that's half the battle. I'm the father of an 8 year old and I am not sitting here clucking my tongue. On the contrary I feel your pain and am fully aware I hav Continue reading >>
Managing Type 1 Diabetes Can Stress Teens
WEDNESDAY, April 21 (HealthDay News) -- Teens with type 1 diabetes may need help as they begin taking more responsibility for monitoring their blood glucose levels and administering insulin, a new study suggests. Researchers monitored 147 diabetic teens for six months. Overall, conflict levels between parent and child stayed fairly steady during this time. But, the study found that younger teens who started taking more responsibility for their own care and who had more conflict with parents became less diligent about monitoring their blood glucose levels and had increased levels of hemoglobin A1c -- a measure of how well blood glucose has been controlled over time. The rise in A1c levels is typical of what occurs during late adolescence and early adulthood, according to study co-author Korey Hood, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children's Hospital. "What you tend to see as you look at large-scale clinical data is that A1c trends from the age of 12 or 13 steadily climb into young adulthood, and then it starts to decline in the mid-20s," Hood said in a news release from the Center for the Advancement of Health. The study was published online April 7 in the Journal of Adolescent Health. "This transition from managing diabetes with the parents to independent management is a huge issue," Aaron Kowalski, assistant vice president for glucose control research at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, said in the news release. Not only do the teens face the typical stresses and peer pressure of adolescence, he noted, but they also have to deal with increased responsibility for controlling their diabetes. -- Robert Preidt Copyright © 2010 HealthDay. All rights reserved. SOURCE: Center for the Advancemen Continue reading >>
Teenage Diabetes | Joslin Diabetes Center
Teenagers typically want to spend more time on their own and have to juggle school, extracurricular activities, and friends. Diabetes management may not be the number one priority and changing hormones can mean more problems with blood glucose control. That is why it is so important to getas much support as possible with diabetes management. One way our team provides additional support is through our discussion board for teens. Other teens with diabetes may be going through similar things and this is a safe place where teens can ask questions and find out how others are dealing with diabetes. Plus, as a teen with diabetes, you may have a suggestion for someone elses problem. Parents of teens have challenges too. For them we have a discussion board for parents as well as a support group of Joslin teens. In the summer, we organize tours of Fenway Park for preteens, teens, and their parents. These tours offer the opportunity for families to meet others with diabetes, as well as have a chance to interact with Joslin Pediatric staff. Joslin's Fenway Park Tours are led by a family support specialist as well as pediatric diabetes medical specialists. Continue reading >>
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- ACTION CENTER
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Diabetes - Issues For Children And Teenagers
On this page: Diabetes mellitus (diabetes) is a chronic and potentially life-threatening condition characterised by the body losing its ability to produce insulin or beginning to produce or use insulin less efficiently. People living with type 1 diabetes must inject insulin regularly, as must some people with type 2 diabetes. Many people with type 2 diabetes can manage their condition with careful diet, exercise and regular testing. Until recently almost all children and teenagers with diabetes had type 1, but now younger people are getting type 2 diabetes due to increasing rates of obesity and being overweight. Children or teenagers who have recently been diagnosed with diabetes may struggle with their emotional reactions to their condition and the reactions of others, and have concerns about going back to school. Teenagers with diabetes may also worry about things like negotiating sex, drinking alcohol, smoking and illicit drugs. A child and their family will need a period of adjustment after diabetes is diagnosed. They must establish a routine for blood glucose monitoring and injecting, learn how to count carbohydrates, see diabetes health professionals regularly and cope with fluctuating blood glucose levels. New challenges may arise as a child moves through different life stages. Reactions to a diagnosis of diabetes A child or teenager newly diagnosed with diabetes will have a range of reactions and emotions. Common reactions experienced by children and their parents include shock, denial, anger, sadness, fear and guilt. These feelings usually subside with time and appropriate support. Common responses to a diagnosis of diabetes include: anxiety about the condition fear of needles and multiple injections a feeling of being overwhelmed by injecting and other tasks t Continue reading >>
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When Your Teen Just Quits: Diabetes And The Teenage Years
When Your Teen Just Quits: Diabetes and the Teenage Years The teenage years are a time of physical, mental, and emotional growth. Like all times of transition and change, the going can get rough at times. For teens with diabetes , diabetes and its care can be one of the rough spots. Just as the changes happening in their bodies make maintaining blood glucose control more challenging, teens are often expected to take more responsibility for managing their diabetes. At the same time, the increasing demands of school, the possibility of holding a job, and the opportunities for a wider social life can make diabetes care seem relatively unimportant in the teenage mind. With all of these competing demands and pressures, some teens quit taking care of themselves. When this happens, what is a parent to do? Understanding the global issues facing teenagers, as well as those particular to the teen in question, will help to address the problem. Heres what happened to two teenagers as they hit their mid- to late teens. Jessica is 15 and has had diabetes for 9 years. When she was much younger, her parents monitored her blood glucose levels, recorded the numbers, measured and supervised her food intake, and made frequent adjustments to her insulin doses. Her blood glucose levels were reasonable, and her HbA1c test results were usually under 8.0%. (The American Diabetes Association recommended goal for HbA1c, a measure of blood glucose control, is less than 7% for most people with diabetes.) Jessica never had a severe hypoglycemic episode that required treatment with glucagon (a hormone that raises blood glucose levels and that must be injected), and she only ever had ketones in her blood or urine when she was sick. (Ketones are acidic by-products of fat metabolism. Their appearance i Continue reading >>
Diabetes
Diabetes is a chronic (long-term) condition that occurs when your body doesn’t make enough insulin, or when your body has trouble using the insulin that it does make. About 1 in 400 young people have this condition. What is insulin? Why is it important? Insulin is a hormone made by a gland called the pancreas. The pancreas is located behind the stomach. Whenever you eat food, your body digests the food (breaks it down) into smaller parts: vitamins, minerals, sugar (called “glucose”), fat, and protein. Your body then uses glucose for energy. Glucose is the body’s major source of energy. Insulin is the hormone that helps glucose enter the cells of your body so it can be used as energy. If your body doesn’t make enough insulin, or if your body has difficulty using the insulin that it makes, the glucose from your food does not get changed into energy. Instead, the glucose stays in your blood, causing your blood glucose (also called “blood sugar”) to rise. Why is high blood sugar a problem? High blood sugar is a problem because it can cause serious damage to the body. Some of the most serious, long term problems are loss of vision, kidney problems, heart problems, damage to circulation and stroke. This kind of damage happens slowly over many years and can be delayed or prevented if you take good care of your diabetes. There are also short-term problems that come from high blood sugar. Some common short term-problems (caused from high blood sugar) are: Being thirsty Having to urinate (pee) more often Feeling irritable or exhausted Weight loss If your blood sugar gets too high due to not having enough insulin, you can experience a very serious condition called diabetic ketoacidosis. Signs of ketoacidosis are: Rapid deep breathing Stomach pain or chest pain and/or Continue reading >>
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Type 1 Diabetes Symptoms
Type 1 diabetes develops gradually, but the symptoms may seem to come on suddenly. If you notice that you or your child have several of the symptoms listed below, make an appointment to see the doctor. Here’s why symptoms seem to develop suddenly: something triggers the development of type 1 diabetes (researchers think it’s a viral infection—read this article on what causes type 1 diabetes, and the body loses its ability to make insulin. However, at that point, there’s still insulin in the body so glucose levels are still normal. Over time, a decreasing amount of insulin is made in the body, but that can take years. When there’s no more insulin in the body, blood glucose levels rise quickly, and these symptoms can rapidly develop: Extreme weakness and/or tiredness Extreme thirst—dehydration Increased urination Abdominal pain Nausea and/or vomiting Blurry vision Wounds that don’t heal well Irritability or quick mood changes Changes to (or loss of) menstruation There are also signs of type 1 diabetes. Signs are different from symptoms in that they can be measured objectively; symptoms are experienced and reported by the patient. Signs of type 1 diabetes include: Weight loss—despite eating more Rapid heart rate Reduced blood pressure (falling below 90/60) Low body temperature (below 97º F) There is an overall lack of public awareness of the signs and symptoms of type 1 diabetes. Making yourself aware of the signs and symptoms of type 1 diabetes is a great way to be proactive about your health and the health of your family members. If you notice any of these signs or symptoms, it’s possible that you have (or your child has) type 1 diabetes. A doctor can make that diagnosis by checking blood glucose levels. Continue reading >>
Diabetes Seems To Be Climbing Quickly In U.s. Teens
Two years ago, a major survey by researchers with the Colorado School of Public Health in Aurora reported that as of 2001, 0.34 percent of teenagers had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. It made that calculation after reviewing data on 1.7 million kids 12 to 19 years old. All had been seen by doctors in Colorado, California, Ohio, South Dakota and Washington state. A new study reviewed data representative of children across the entire United States. It finds that more than twice as many adolescents as in the earlier study — 0.8 percent — now have diabetes. “To our knowledge, these are the first estimates of diabetes in a nationally representative sample of U.S. adolescents” using the best available markers of disease, the new study notes. These include three different measures of current and past blood-sugar levels in the body. The new estimates of teen diabetes rates also are higher than ever reported. The findings appear in the July 19 issue of JAMA. Diabetes is known as a metabolic disease. That means it affects how the body processes energy — what most people think of as food. The body uses many different processes to digest what it eats and drinks, turning food and drink into simple sugars. Cells can use that sugar to stay warm, to fuel their activities and to build new tissues. But in diabetes, especially the type-2 form, the body has trouble using that sugar. A hormone known as insulin is supposed to bring sugar into cells. But insulin cannot work effectively in diabetes. It ends up leaving too much sugar in the bloodstream, where it can ultimately damage tissues. In type 1 diabetes, the body does not make enough insulin, leading to the same problem. A half-century ago, the type-2 form of this disease seldom showed up in people under 40 to 60 years o Continue reading >>
Diabetes In Children And Teens: Signs And Symptoms
With more than a third of diabetes cases in the United States occurring in people over the age of 65, diabetes is often referred to as an age-related condition. But around 208,000 children and adolescents are estimated to have diabetes, and this number is increasing. Type 1 diabetes is the most common form of the condition among children and adolescents. A 2009 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that type 1 diabetes prevalence stands at 1.93 in every 1,000 children and adolescents, while type 2 diabetes affects 0.24 in every 1,000. In 2014, Medical News Today reported that, based on a study published in JAMA, rates of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes have increased significantly among American children and teenagers. The study found that incidence of type 1 diabetes in children aged up to 9 years increased by 21 percent between 2001 and 2009, while incidence of type 2 diabetes among youths aged 10-19 years rose by 30.5 percent. The researchers note: "The increases in prevalence reported herein are important because such youth with diabetes will enter adulthood with several years of disease duration, difficulty in treatment, an increased risk of early complications and increased frequency of diabetes during reproductive years, which may further increase diabetes in the next generation." Contents of this article: Here are some key points about diabetes in children. More detail and supporting information is in the main article. Type 1 and 2 diabetes are both increasing in the youth of America Often, the symptoms of type 1 diabetes in children develop over just a few weeks If type 1 diabetes is not spotted, the child can develop diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) What is diabetes in children? Type 1 diabetes in children, previously called juve Continue reading >>
10 Tips For Teenagers To Live Well With Type 1 Diabetes
Twitter Summary: @asbrown1 shares his top 10 tips for living w/ #T1D, straight from presentation to 100+ teens at #CWDFFL15 At the Children with Diabetes Friends For Life Conference this month, I had the incredible opportunity to speak to ~100 teenagers with diabetes. My talk, “10 Tips for Living Well with Type 1,” was a lot of fun to put together, and our team thought diaTribe readers might be interested in seeing it. I agonized over how to present this so that it wouldn’t come across as a lecture – even my teenage self would not react well to some of the advice (“Sleep seven hours a night? Hah! I have sports plus exams plus the next level to beat in Halo 3!”). I concluded that the best thing I could do was make this session a conversation, but ground it in lessons I’ve learned over time. Thankfully, I also had the amazing FFL staff by my side to help guide the discussion. The session reminded me of something that I intuitively know but often forget: each person’s diabetes is completely different, and what works for me won’t work for everyone. And equally important, what works for me may change over time – it certainly has since I was a teenager. I’m sharing the slides below in case they’re useful, but my biggest hope is that it gets you thinking about your own diabetes. What motivates you? What drags you down? What can you do better today? Who can you reach out to for support? Let us what you think by email or on Twitter. As the oldest of six kids, I had a lot of responsibility from a young age, and my Mom was also a very hands-off parent; both helped me take the reins of my diabetes from an early age. I hope everyone can find the right balance between taking care of their own diabetes, but also relying on their parents for support when needed. Continue reading >>
