Key Points To Remember About Diabetes In Children
Diabetes happens when the level of glucose in the blood is too high.
- diabetes is a condition where the level of glucose in the blood is too high
- that’s because the body is not using the glucose properly
- in type 1 diabetes, the main problem is that the insulin-making cells in the pancreas are destroyed and not able to make enough insulin
- in type 2 diabetes, the main problem is that the body is not able to use the insulin effectively due to resistance to insulin
- both forms of diabetes are lifelong conditions – once diagnosed as having type 1 or type 2 diabetes, your child will always have it
- you can minimise the long-term risks and complications for your child
If My Family Has Had Covid And Recovers How Cautious Should We Be Going Forward
Lam: There is always the risk of reinfection. But that is true of any illness, or any cold virus even. Sometimes you can get the same one again, its just mutated a little bit. In general, it tends to be milder than the one before, and its usually at least a few months after the first round.
Practically speaking, I would say it creates a temporary breath of relief for that family. The likelihood of them getting covid again, at least with the current variant, is pretty low. But there are caveats. Could you actually get a subvariant and get sick again, even pretty early on, less than several months? Its possible, if kind of unlikely.
Weighing Your Risk Factors
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What To Look For: Symptoms Of Pediatric Diabetes In Babies And Toddlers
You may or may not be aware that increased thirst and frequent urination are common symptoms of type 1 diabetes in toddlers and other young children. The reason this happens is rising blood-sugar levels trigger a reaction in the body that pulls fluid from tissues. This will leave your son or daughter constantlyand understandablythirsty, which leads to increased urination. If your toddler is potty-trained you may also notice that they revert back or have bed-wetting issues.
But what else should you watch out for? Below are some other potential signs of pediatric diabetes:
Fatigue: This could be a sign that your childs body isnt able to turn the sugar in the bloodstream into energy.
Intense hunger and unexplained weight loss: If your kids muscles and organs arent receiving enough energy, it can trigger extreme hunger. And sudden weight lossespecially if he or she is eating morecould also be a major warning sign.
Changes in vision: High blood-glucose levels could lead to blurred vision or other eyesight issues. Unfortunately at a very young age, your son or daughter may not yet be able to articulate this.
Yeast infection: This type of infection can be one of the signs of diabetes in babiesbut it may present itself as a diaper rash caused by excessive yeast.
Fruity smelling breath or sugar in urine: This is a sign that your kids body is attempting to excrete sugar that it cant get into its cells.
The Risk Of Type 1 Diabetes In Patients Near Relatives
Siblings of a child with type 1 diabetes have an approximately 5% risk of developing the disease in children of a parent with type 1 diabetes, the risk lies between 5% and 7%.
Maturity-onset diabetes of the young , a further variety of diabetes with a molecular genetic but not immunological basis, is about as common among children and adolescents as type 2 diabetes. Of the 14 known types of MODY, types 2 and 3 are the most common its overall prevalence has been estimated at 2.4 per 100 000 individuals . In patients with a negative autoantibody status and an uneventful long-term course of illness, such special types of diabetes should be considered in the differential diagnosis and looked for with molecular genetic studies, as their treatment differs markedly from that of type 1 diabetes. Other varieties of diabetes mellitus in childhood include neonatal diabetes and diabetes in the setting of cystic fibrosis and other rare syndromes . No precise figures on the incidence and prevalence of these rare varieties of diabetes have been published to date. The only available data are derived from individual regions, or from registries .
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How Is Diabetes Diagnosed In Toddlers
If your toddlerâs healthcare provider suspects diabetes, she may recommend testing to check your toddlerâs blood glucose levels. Here are some common tests your provider may perform:
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Random blood sugar test. A blood test is done at a random time to measure glucose levels.
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Glycated hemoglobin blood test. This test measures the percentage of glucose attached to the hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen.
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Fasting blood sugar test. For this test, a blood sample is taken after an overnight fast.
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Oral glucose tolerance test. If your healthcare provider suspects type 2 diabetes, an oral glucose tolerance test may be recommended. The first blood test is taken after an eight-hour or overnight fast. Then your little one will drink a sugary solution and his blood sugar levels will be rechecked via a blood test several times over the next few hours.
Your toddlerâs healthcare provider will explain the testing process and go over the results with you.
How Can I Identify Anxiety Or Depression In My Child Thanks To All Of This And What Should I Do About It
OLeary: There are a lot of resources to help. Specifically, there are very nice resources on our healthychildren.org site about mental health. Its also never a bad idea to reach out to your pediatrician. My colleagues in primary care have never seen the volume of mental health issues theyve seen in the last year or year and a half, but there are resources out there.
Abraham: At Childrens National Hospital in DC, we are seeing a significant increase in the number of kids presenting for anxiety, depression and self-injury. Be aware of changes in younger kids such as excessive clinginess, irritability, or new onset of bed wetting. For older kids, be attuned to withdrawal from normal activities, changes in eating or sleeping. Ask preteens and teens specifically if they are feeling stressed, anxious or depressed, or if they think life is not worth living. Many parents and caregivers are afraid to directly ask about suicide, fearing it may make an adolescent suicidal but in fact doing so is more likely to get a teen the care they need. Also consider getting a health-care provider involved, such as your pediatrician or a mental health counselor. Many are providing appointments virtually.
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How To Prevent Type 2 Diabetes In Children
You can help children avoid diabetes by encouraging them to take the following steps:
- Practice healthy habits. Children who eat well-balanced meals and limit their intake of sugar and refined carbs are less likely to become overweight and develop diabetes.
- Get moving.Regular exercise is important for preventing diabetes. Organized sports or neighborhood pick-up games are great ways to get kids moving and active. Limit screen time and encourage outside play instead.
- Maintain a healthy weight. Healthy diet and exercise habits can help children maintain a healthy weight.
Its also important to set a good example for children. Be active with your child and encourage good habits by demonstrating them yourself.
How Hard Is It To Have A Child With Type 1 Diabetes
If your baby was born after you were 25, your childs risk is 1 in 100. If you developed type 1 diabetes before age 11, your child is twice as likely to develop type 1 diabetes at some point in their life. If both you and your spouse have type 1 diabetes, your childs risk is between 1 in 10 and 1 in 4.
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Do Not Miss The Symptoms
Children and adolescents with diabetes usually experience four main symptoms, but many children will only have one or two. In some cases, they may show no symptoms at all.
If a child suddenly becomes more thirsty or tired or urinates more than usual, their parents may not consider diabetes a possibility.
This might also be the case for doctors, since diabetes is less common among very young children. They may attribute the symptoms to other, more common illnesses. For this reason, they may not diagnose diabetes straight away.
It is important to be aware of the possible signs and symptoms of diabetes in children in order to get a diagnosis and treatment plan as soon as possible.
One of the most serious consequences of undiagnosed type 1 diabetes is DKA. The sections below will look at this, and other complications, in more detail.
The Cause Of Type 1 Diabetes
Type 1 diabetes is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. If a person who has a genetic tendency to develop diabetes comes in to contact with a trigger in the environment, then diabetes may develop.
Many people who have a genetic tendency to develop diabetes do not get diabetes, so researchers are trying to find out more about what the environmental triggers are. These triggers are poorly understood, but may be common things in our environment such as viruses.
If diabetes is triggered, the body’s immune system, which normally protects us from infection, begins to attack the insulin-making cells which are called beta cells, in the pancreas. The immune system starts to destroy the beta cells, causing a decrease in insulin production. It can take from a few weeks to a few years for all the beta cells to be destroyed.
Symptoms of diabetes do not occur until more than 90 percent of the beta cells have been destroyed. This means that it is difficult to tell if a person is developing diabetes, until the symptoms of diabetes occur. It is important to remember the following points:
- you cannot catch diabetes from another person – it is not contagious
- type 1 diabetes is not caused by eating too much sugar or any other foods
- there is nothing you could have done differently to prevent your child from getting type 1 diabetes
- your child cannot grow out of type 1 diabetes – it does not change to type 2 diabetes as they get older
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Tips For Parents: How To Manage Diabetes In Your Toddler
If your toddler is diagnosed with diabetes, your medical team will make sure your little one gets a great treatment plan.
Diabetes does require lots of attentive care and lifestyle changes that can be challenging to explain and enforce with a toddler, but there are steps you can take to make things a little easier and help reduce the risk of complications:
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Help your child make healthy food choices. Diet plays an essential role in managing diabetes, so try to help your little one establish good habits at a young age. You can do things together as a family such as cooking healthy meals together and sitting down to eat without distractions. Try to introduce more fruits and veggies with each meal, and set a positive example for your little one when it comes to your own eating habits.
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Get your toddler active. Exercise is important when it comes to diabetes, so take advantage of any fun ways to get your toddler moving each day.
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Have your child wear a medical identification tag or bracelet. If a medical emergency occurs, this tag or bracelet identifies that your child is diabetic to the medical team or anyone who comes to your childâs aid. You can ask your healthcare provider for more information about getting one of these.
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Help your little one develop a relationship with the diabetes treatment team. Explain to your child that the members of her treatment team are there to help her and are her friends help her develop positive associations with them.
Effective Treatments For Type 1 Diabetes
Insulin
Children with type 1 diabetes need insulin to replace the insulin that the body cannot make anymore. Insulin is a hormone which you cannot take as an oral medicine – you must inject it into the layer of fat under the skin.
Healthy diet
A child with type 1 diabates needs to eat a healthy diet, just like a child without diabetes. They need a regular intake of carbohydrates for growth and development.
Physical activity
Physical activity is the best foundation for management of type 1 diabetes. Physical activity is part of a healthy lifestyle.
Matching insulin to carbohydrates and physical activity
The amount of insulin a child with type 1 diabetes needs depends on the amount of carbohydrates they eat and the amount of physical activity they do. This is called matching insulin to carbohydrates and physical activity.
Learning about diabetes
There is a lot to learn about how to care for a child or young person with diabetes.
This learning involves the whole family, extended family, and other people that are involved in the life of a child or young person – school staff, friends, neighbours, sports coaches, etc.
Education and learning about type 1 diabetes is an ongoing process.
Check Diabetes – physical activity.
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Blood Sugar Levels Action Points
- Ask your diabetes team what blood sugar targets your child should aim for and what to do about high/low results.
- Check with your diabetes team the best times of day to test, and if you need to test at night.
- Make sure you get free testing supplies on prescription talk to your diabetes team for more information
Diabetes Screening Is All The More Necessary As The Disease Can Progress Without Symptoms For Years Diabetes Screening Is Essential Explanations
“20 million blood glucose tests are performed in France each year, which means that one in three French people is screened every year. The associations campaign for better screening, in order to identify the hidden diabetics “, explains PrJean-Jacques Altman, head of the diabetology department at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital.
Where to get tested?
Diabetes screening consists of a simple blood test in the laboratory, in the morning on an empty stomach .If the result is positive, a 2nd blood glucose is made to confirm the diagnosis. If the result is negative, the test will be repeated every year in moderate hyperglycaemic patients on an empty stomach and every 3 years in the others.
How it works?
The blood sugar level is measured. Normal blood glucose is less than 1.10 g / l on an empty stomach. We talk about diabetes if we find twice a blood glucose level reaching or exceeding 1.26 g / l. Between these two values, it is moderate hyperglycemia fasting, to watch closely because it evolves frequently to diabetes over the years. Another way of detecting diabetes is to look for excess sugar in the urine by dipping a test strip: it is glycosuria. This technique is simpler to implement and often used in occupational medicine or school medicine, but it is less precise.
Who should be diagnosed with diabetes?
At what frequency ?
And if one is diabetic?
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The Cause Of Type 2 Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes and affects mainly older people. But, type 2 diabetes is becoming more common in children and young people throughout the world. The tendency to develop type 2 diabetes is inherited, but it also depends on environmental factors.
The major risk factor for getting type 2 diabetes is being overweight . Being overweight is often related to lifestyle factors such as not getting enough physical activity and eating too much of certain types of foods such as sugar, fats, and takeaway or ‘fast’ foods.
It is important to remember the following points:
- type 2 diabetes is becoming more common in younger populations
- the risk of getting type 2 diabetes lessens by becoming physically active and eating a healthy diet
Why Are Glucose Tests Done
Doctors do glucose tests to check for low or high levels of glucose. Sometimes it’s done as part of a routine checkup to screen for problems, and sometimes because a child has not been feeling well.
A low glucose level is called hypoglycemia. A high level of glucose is called hyperglycemia. Diabetes is one thing that can cause high glucose levels.
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