Prevent Type 2 Diabetes In Kids

Prevent Type 2 Diabetes in Kids

There’s a growing type 2 diabetes problem in our young people. But parents can help turn the tide with healthy changes that are good for the whole family.
Until recently, young children and teens almost never got type 2 diabetes, which is why it used to be called adult-onset diabetes. Now, about one-third of American youth are overweight, a problem closely related to the increase in kids with type 2 diabetes, some as young as 10 years old.
Weight Matters
People who are overweight—especially if they have excess belly fat—are more likely to have insulin resistance, kids included. Insulin resistance is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes.
Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas that acts like a key to let blood sugar into cells for use as energy. Because of heredity (traits inherited from family members) or lifestyle (eating too much and moving too little), cells can stop responding normally to insulin. That causes the pancreas to make more insulin to try to get cells to respond and take in blood sugar.
As long as enough insulin is produced, blood sugar levels remain normal. This can go on for several years, but eventually the pancreas can’t keep up. Blood sugar starts to rise, first after meals and then all the time. Now the stage is set for type 2 diabetes.
Insulin resistance usually doesn’t have any symptoms, though some kids develop patches of thickened, dark, velvety skin called acanthosis nigricans, usually in body creases and folds such as the back of the neck or armpits. They may also have other conditions related to insulin resistance, including:
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Diabetes rates skyrocket in kids and teens

The prevalence of diabetes in children shot up dramatically between 2000 and 2009, a new study shows.
The amount of type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease, climbed 21% from 2000 to 2009, to 1.93 per 1,000 children. The prevalence of type 2 diabetes — which is associated with obesity — jumped more than 30% in the same period, to a rate of 0.46 per 1,000 kids, according to a study presented Saturday at the Pediatric Academic Societies' meeting in Vancouver, Canada.
Nationwide, nearly 167,000 children and teens younger than 20 have type 1 diabetes, while more than 20,000 have type 2, says study author Dana Dabelea, of the Colorado School of Public Health in Aurora, Colo.
"These increases are serious," Dabelea says. "Every new case means a lifetime burden of difficult and costly treatment and higher risk of early, serious complications."
The new study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is the most comprehensive available, said David Ludwig, director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children's Hospital, who was not involved in the study. The research, called the SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth Study, included 3 million children and adolescents in different regions of the USA.
Researchers acknowledge that the study doesn't include information from the last five years.
"We don't know what happened in the last five years," Ludwig says. "Most likely, things have gotten worse."
Type 1 diabetes, once known as juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes, occurs when the pancreas makes little or no insulin, a hormone that Continue reading

Lack of sleep tied to higher risk of diabetes in kids

Reuters Health - Children who don’t get enough sleep may be more likely to develop diabetes than kids who typically get enough shuteye, a UK study suggests.
That’s because each additional hour of sleep children get at night is associated with a lower body weight, more lean muscle mass and less accumulation of sugars in the blood, researchers report in Pediatrics. Obesity and elevated blood sugar are risk factors for type 2 diabetes, which happens when the body can’t properly use or make enough of the hormone insulin to convert blood sugar into energy.
“These findings suggest increasing sleep duration could offer a simple, cost-effective approach to reducing levels of body fat and type 2 diabetes risk early in life,” senior study author Christopher Owen of St. George’s, University of London, said by email.
Type 2 diabetes used to be called adult-onset diabetes because it was so rare in children. But today, it’s a common childhood health problem, in large part because millions of kids worldwide are overweight or obese, don’t get enough exercise, and eat too many sugary and fatty foods.
For the current study, researchers examined survey data on sleep habits and lab results from tests of risk factors for diabetes in 4,525 UK children age 9 or 10.
On average, the kids slept 10.5 hours on school nights, although sleep duration ranged from 8 to 12 hours.
Children who got less sleep in the study were more likely to have a risk factor for diabetes known as insulin resistance, when the body doesn’t respond normally to the hormone.
Kids who slept less were also more Continue reading

Bacteria may cause Type 2 diabetes

Findings suggest anti-bacterial therapy or vaccines may be able to prevent or treat Type 2 diabetes
Bacteria and viruses have an obvious role in causing infectious diseases, but microbes have also been identified as the surprising cause of other illnesses, including cervical cancer (Human papilloma virus) and stomach ulcers (H. pylori bacteria).
A new study by University of Iowa microbiologists now suggests that bacteria may even be a cause of one of the most prevalent diseases of our time: Type 2 diabetes.
The research team led by Patrick Schlievert, professor and department executive officer of microbiology at the UI Carver College of Medicine, found that prolonged exposure to a toxin produced by Staphylococcus aureus (staph) bacteria causes rabbits to develop the hallmark symptoms of Type 2 diabetes, including insulin resistance, glucose intolerance, and systemic inflammation.
“We basically reproduced Type 2 diabetes in rabbits simply through chronic exposure to the staph superantigen,” Schlievert says.
The UI findings suggest that therapies aimed at eliminating staph bacteria or neutralizing the superantigens might have potential for preventing or treating Type 2 diabetes.
Obesity is a known risk factor for developing Type 2 diabetes, but obesity also alters a person’s microbiome—the ecosystem of bacteria that colonize our bodies and affect our health.
“What we are finding is that as people gain weight, they are increasingly likely to be colonized by staph bacteria—to have large numbers of these bacteria living on the surface of their skin,” Schlievert say Continue reading

Exercising With Diabetes: How Much Is Enough?

Exercise is an effective way to improve the body's ability to use insulin and help control blood sugar levels—important goals for people with diabetes. But how much exercise does it take to achieve these benefits?
Starting a Program
Anyone who has diabetes should get the OK for a new exercise program from his or her diabetes care team. Topics to discuss include what activity level is appropriate and what (if any) special precautions to take, based on the type of diabetes, medications, current fitness state, complications, glucose levels and other factors.
Exercise Frequency & Timing
Researchers have discovered that when a muscle is exercised, it draws glucose out of the bloodstream for fuel, helping control levels of sugar in the blood. This effect continues not just during exercise, but for 24 to 72 hours afterward. For this reason, experts recommend people with diabetes exercise at least five days per week, if not every day. This ensures that the muscles draw sugar from the bloodstream continuously.
While science hasn't produced a definitive answer to how much time is enough for people with diabetes to exercise, here are some useful observations:
Many studies of diabetes and exercise have looked at the benefits of walking (or, in some cases, biking or jogging) for about 30 minutes per session. This amount has been found to be quite effective at helping to control blood sugar.
A group of Italian researchers followed a large number of people with diabetes for two years. The results of their study, published in Diabetes Care, found that people who got 38 minutes of exercis Continue reading