Archive for the ‘Diabetes’ Category
Juvenile Diabetes Symptoms That You Can Identify
July 21st, 2010 | 
Author: Diabetes is a disease that is not only a danger to adults, but is also a major health concern in children today. As the number of children with diabetes keep rising, it becomes very important for you as a parent to keep a close check on your child’s health. You may not see any accompanying signs but you should identify any or some juvenile diabetes symptoms if they manifest so that you can quickly consult your child’s doctor for appropriate action.
Just as the name implies, juvenile or diabetes type 1 occurs mainly in children. In this case, you have a build up of glucose in the blood stream which the body is unable to use because of little or no supply of insulin to convert the glucose into energy in the cells. Obviously this will produce a number of symptoms in the child which are quite similar to the ones adults have.
They include:
1. Extreme hunger
2. Frequent urination leading to
3. Increased thirst, especially for sweet, cold drinks
4. Unusual fatigue
5. Weight loss
6. Blurred vision
7. Stomach discomfort, nausea
8. Inability to concentrate in activities
Children with diabetes may also feel sleepy throughout the day, be indifferent and may have difficulty functioning at school. This is why it is really important for your child to have routine check ups as early detection and proper management of diabetes will help avoid complications leading to other diseases.
If your child has type 1 diabetes, you have to consult your doctor who will enlighten you with the dos and don’ts of how to manage your child’s health. For younger children, it is also necessary to inform their teachers at school on how to care for them properly when they need help. By doing that, your child will be assisted and cared for in a way that will enable he or she to function well generally. As a parent, you have to ensure the quality and joy in your children lives to the best of your abilities so making sure they have regular check ups and eat right, along with exercising regularly can give them a better chance at having a healthier, happier life and they will be so happy to have parents that cared for them so very much.
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Dangers and Causes of Obesity in Children and Youths Plus Hot Solutions!
Analysis has shown that overweight and obesity in children and youths are a major public health problems in the United States. The prevalence of obesity among children aged 5 to 12 years is quite disturbing and its prevalence among adolescents aged 13 to 22 years is also on the sharp rise.
Obesity is the outcome of caloric disproportion. Large amount of calories are consumed but too few of it are relatively expended. Childhood obesity and overweight among adolescents has both instant and long-term health impacts. The following section outlines the causes of obesity in children and youths and the possible weight loss solutions that can be adopted to reduce or avoid the scourge of excess fat.
Children are getting more of their food outside home. Calorie intake gotten from food eating away from home is on the rise. This is probably due to the fact that parents no longer have time to prepare meal for their wards any more. Children’s energy intake can be monitored, managed and controlled when they eat less food outside the home and eat almost all their daily meals as carefully prepared at home.
Children seem to prefer feeding on junks or high calorie snacks than most adults do. As much as parents enjoy a level of comfort of their loved kid(s) when visiting the supermarkets, care should be taken to control the desire of such children towards the purchase and consumption of junks or high calorie snacks. Such junks can however be substituted for low calorie confectioneries.
There has been a sharp reduction in children breakfast consumption. This problem is often associated with children of working mothers. Spouses are advised to work together to ensure that their kids take brake fast at home before leaving for school. The habit of preparing children’s meal in a food flask only permits the child to feed on alternative junks when hungry.
Most parents do not know what to feed their children with or how to control their children’s weight. Read vital tips to avoiding obesity in your kid – that provides the solution to that problem.
Most children are restricted from regular exercise. Due to excess time spent on academic activities, watching television, playing computer or video games or for parent’s reserved reasons, most children are kept from enough exercise. Since a total avoidance of energy or calorie intake is impossible and calorie and energy food plays a vital role in the body, regular exercise would help in expending excess calories. Of course, there are numerous wonderful home exercises your kids can practice.
Information Regarding Gestational Diabetes Symptoms
Why does gestational diabetes usually occur in pregnant women? Among 2 to 7 percent of expectant women develop gestational diabetes. This condition is considered as the most common health problem during pregnancy.
This problem happens when the digestive system breaks down a large amount of the food into the glucose (sugar). This sugar enters into the bloodstream and provides fuel to the body’s cells. The glucose within in this disease stays on the blood rather than moving into the cells and obtaining changed to energy. The hormones make it harder for a body to use the insulin and for this reason, the pancreas forcedly need to produce more insulin for the body.
Gestational Diabetes doesn’t cause any indications but a pregnant woman may do experience some unnecessary weight gain, thirst and hunger, excessive urination or sometimes vaginal infection. This condition is controllable and preventable. In prevention, a pregnant woman must carefully control her blood sugar after diagnosing. This can be distinguished by the glucose tolerance tests to which the doctor checks the mother 13 weeks during her pregnancy.
This test includes drinking glucose solution and after an hour, a blood from the vein on arm is taken and the doctor will check and examine the glucose level. When the sugar (glucose) level is above 140mg/dl, the pregnant woman will performed another set of test called 3 hour glucose tolerance-test. This test and examination includes diet (eating only an amount of 150 g of carbohydrate foods in a day 3 days after the test.
Untreated Gestational Diabetes can imply problems to her baby. This problem includes very large or extra fat new born baby which will make the delivery more dangerous for both, low blood sugar after birth or problems in breathing. Working tightly to your health-care team may help you in delivering a healthy baby.
There are other steps to obtain your glucose level on its target range. Learn to manage your glucose level by means of meal plan. In this method a dietitian will prescribed as well as advised you to limit or lessen eating sweets, eat 1-3 snacks daily, have a three balance or small meals a day, more careful in eating food rich n carbohydrates and always includes fiber in the meal such as vegetables and fruits or cereals and bread. Other steps such as having a daily exercise or physical activity like walking, monitoring your sugar level, having insulin injections regularly and maintaining healthy body can be helpful in preventing gestational diabetes.
What You Need to Know Regarding Diabetes Information
Diabetes is known as a persistent disease that commonly takes place to a person whose pancreas is unable to produce or create certain amount of insulin needed by the body or because the cells doesn’t react with the insulin produced by the body. This disease generally translates as the unnecessary sweet urine called Glycosuria. Some rare diseases are named as diabetes. One of the common diseases is the Diabetes Insipidus to which an excessive amount of (polyuria) urine is being produced.
Most of these conditions drop in 3 wide categories. The known diabetes such as childhood onset, insulin dependent diabetes as well as the juvenile diabetes are usually known as the Type One Diabetes. Likewise, the Type Two Diabetes includes obesity related diabetes mellitus, non-insulin dependent diabetes and the adult onset diabetes. With these two types of diabetes, there has no standard agreement upon usual classification. The type 3 diabetes is well-known disease for pregnant women. This type is called Gestational Diabetes. Genes is also cause or part of this health problem. Other families consider diabetes as inherited disease. About 150 million people are affected with this chronic disease worldwide.
Symptoms for type 1 will develop quickly in a few months or within weeks whereas type 2 diabetes generally occurs much slowly and might be absent or restrained. Protracted high blood sugar can cause sugar (glucose) absorption that directly changes the shape of a person’s eye lenses and the vision will negatively change. Blurred visualization typically happens and this problem leads to diabetes diagnosis. Other signs and symptoms of this disease include recurrent infection, poor healing of wounds, remarkable tiredness and drowsiness after eating and increased thirst.
This disease is difficult to treat. Diabetes management focuses in keeping the sugar level closely normal or the euglycemia without the presence of excessive patient danger. Diet, exercise and using the appropriate or standard medications can lessen this problem. Oral medications can be use for type 2 diabetes such as insulin. Anti-diabetic drugs and Insulin therapy may also help you with this ailment.
Diabetes is also a main risk cause for coronary-heart disease as well as stroke or named as heart attack. Person with this problem must avoid blood as well as heart vessel disease by preventing and controlling the risk factors. The most important is to control the blood sugar by having a low saturated-fat, diet and weight loss or doing regular physical activity.
Diabetes and You – Insulin Therapy Management
Did you know that in 2006 diabetes was the seventh leading cause of death in the US. Wow, that was four years ago…I can only imagine what it is today. To add to that, did you know that the US spent $174 billion dollars on diabetes medical costs in 2007….a significant piece of change might I add! More and more people in the US are being diagnosed with diabetes. Some of the morbidities and mortalities of diabetes include heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, kidney disease and amputations to name a few. Being diagnosed with diabetes is not the end of the world…or your life for that matter however, it should definitely be a wake up call! There are several treatment modalities available on the market to date to manage diabetes. Today, let’s discuss insulin. I want to provide you with a few key things you can implement to help you utilize your insulin safely.
1. Cleanliness. Prior to injecting your insulin, start with a fresh syringe, needle, and a freshly cleaned area of skin. Also, be sure to swab the rubber stopper on top of your insulin vial (with alcohol)….this will decrease chances of infection.
2. The withdrawal! When withdrawing insulin from your vial, be sure to pull back the plunger on the syringe to the number of units you need to withdraw. Push the air in the syringe into the vial…then pull up your insulin. The air will decrease the vacuum that the vial creates upon withdrawal.
3. Air bubbles. Be sure to adjust and tap your syringe…if needed to remove any air bubbles inside of your syringe, as this takes up the space of your insulin which means you may be lacking a few units!
4. Injection site preparation. I will say again, be sure to THOROUGHLY CLEANSE THE INJECTION SITE as this will decrease the chances of infection.
5. Injection time…1, 2, 3….GO…ouch! Man up… it’s just a little sting!
6. Properly discard your supplies…syringe, swabs etc. Syringes should be placed into your sharps container to prevent exposure for anyone living in your household…especially children!
7. Storage. Be sure to store your insulin under refrigeration!
Housekeeping Tip
When taking insulin timing is of the essence! Please be sure to inject insulins prior to meal…especially if you’re taking a rapid acting or regular insulin as these will peak quickly! Examples of these types of insuling include Novolog, Humalog, Novolin R and Humulin R. If you are taking a bedtime dose of insulin, be sure to eat a light snack before you say night, night! This will prevent late night or shall we say early morning shakes, and blood sugar drops! TO YOUR HEALTH!!!
Top Pregnancy Concerns – Gestational Diabetes
When discussing common pregnancy concerns, gestational diabetes and other forms of diabetes usually rank near the top of the list. There is good reason for such attention given to diabetics during pregnancy and other metabolic disorders affecting pregnancy. Type II Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases in America today.
In recent decades, diabetic rates have skyrocketed. Pregnancy related diabetes is one area of special concern. Not only due to the negative impact diabetes has on maternal and fetal health, but also because gestational diabetes is one of the most accurate predictors of future development of the more serious and irreversible Type II Diabetes.
Spotting Gestational Diabetes
Gestational diabetes can be tricky to diagnose based on symptoms alone. Some women whose insulin and blood sugar levels are severely out of balance report having no pregnancy concerns at all. Other women with perfectly normal insulin function report typical diabetic symptoms of extreme thirst and frequent urination.
While difficult to detect from symptoms alone, the most commonly observed indicators of gestational diabetes include:
- repetitive vaginal infections
- weight gain
- larger than average fetus/baby
- extreme thirst
- frequent urination
Gestational diabetes is usually discovered by a simple glucose test. Administered between the 24th and 28th weeks of pregnancy the test for gestational diabetes measures a woman’s blood sugar one hour after a high fructose beverage is consumed.
Women whose blood sugar levels are below 140 mg/dl are considered safe, while women with levels higher than 140 mg/dl are considered to be at risk and further testing is required.
Additional tests include a second blood glucose test, which is coupled with a restricted diet in the days immediately prior to the test.
Diagnosis and Treatment of Gestational Diabetes
If the diagnosis of gestational diabetes is conclusive, specific pregnancy and diet guidelines will be instituted by the attending OB/GYN. These pregnancy and diet guidelines are not too invasive and are aimed at maintaining normal blood sugar and insulin levels via extra care given to nutrition during pregnancy.
Additional intervening steps may be needed if shifts in diet alone fail to control blood sugar. These measures usually include a lot of needles such as blood tests, insulin shots and other medications.
Gestational diabetes can be prevented and at the very least controlled by proper, well-balanced nutrition during pregnancy. A recommended diet for mothers suffering from gestational diabetes is rich in deep colored vegetables like leafy greens. Fruits are on the caution list as they contain high levels of sugar, but they are definitely preferable to a sugary cake, candy bar or other sweets. Proteins are also important, as they tend to help blood sugar levels remain steady.
Eating proteins from quality organic sources and avoiding foods high in processed chemicals, preservatives, white flours and sugars does not have to be boring. With all of the delicious vegetables and natural foods to choose from, you can put together meals that your taste buds will enjoy. In the long run, this kind of diet will keep both mother and baby healthy not only during the pregnancy but long afterwards as well.