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Children with Diabetes
This vast online
resource has pretty much everything you need to know about diabetes. We
especially like the following resources found only at this website:
Meters Lifescan (maker of the Ultra series of glucose meters) Roche (maker of the AccuChek series of meters) Abbott (maker of the Freestyle and Flash series of meters)
Resources
A Few Facts About Diabetes:
What is diabetes? Diabetes is a disease in which your body is unable to properly use and store glucose (a form of sugar). Glucose backs up in the bloodstream—causing your blood glucose or "sugar" to rise too high.
There are two major types of diabetes. In Type 1 (also called juvenile-onset or insulin-dependent) diabetes, your body completely stops producing any insulin, a hormone that enables your body to use glucose found in foods for energy. People with Type 1 diabetes must take daily insulin injections to survive. This form of diabetes usually develops in children or young adults, but can occur at any age. In Type 2 (also called adult-onset or non insulin-dependent) diabetes, the body produces insulin, but not enough to properly convert food into energy. This form of diabetes usually occurs in people who are over 40, overweight, and have a family history of diabetes.
How is diabetes treated?
There are certain things that everyone who has diabetes, whether type 1 or type 2, needs to do to be healthy. You need to have a meal (eating) plan. You need to pay attention to how much you exercise, because exercise can help your body use insulin better to convert glucose into energy for cells. Everyone with type 1 diabetes, and some people with type 2 diabetes, also need to take insulin injections.
Everyone who has diabetes should be seen at least once every three months by a diabetes specialist (an endocrinologist or a pediatrician that is trained to care for diabetes). You should also be seen periodically by other members of a diabetes treatment team, including a diabetes nurse educator, and a diabetes dietitian educator who helps you develop a meal plan that works best for you. Everyone who has diabetes should have regular eye exams (once a year) by an ophthalmologist to make sure that any eye problems associated with diabetes are caught early, and treated before they become serious.
Also, people with diabetes need to learn how to monitor their blood sugars day-to-day at home using home blood sugar monitoring. This daily testing, which your diabetes educator can explain to you, will help you see how well your meal plan, exercise, and medication are working to keep your blood sugars in a normal range.
What other problems can diabetes cause?
Your health care team will encourage you to follow your meal plan and exercise program, use your medications and monitor your blood sugars regularly to keep your blood sugars in as normal a range as possible as much of the time as possible. Why is this so important? Because poorly managed diabetes can lead to a host of long-term complications—among them are heart attacks, strokes, blindness, kidney failure, blood vessel disease that requires an amputation, nerve damage, and impotence in men.
But happily, a recent nationwide study completed over a 10-year period showed that if people keep their blood sugars as close to normal as possible, they can reduce their risk of developing some of these complications by 50 percent or more.
