Juvenile Diabetes
Fighting Diabetes In children
Checking for blood glucose is simple. You only require
a blood glucose check or test which contains a special needle, called a
lancet. Just stick your child’s finger with the lancet to get a drop of
blood. There are some lancets that have a spring-load feature, making
sticking with a needle a less painful process.
Teach Your Child
to Manage Diabetes
Your child is helpless against the seriousness of
diabetes. He/she looks up to you for support and guidance. He/she may
not know or understand his/her condition entirely and wouldn’t know the
first thing about what to do in order to keep it from worsening.
While you, as a parent, are expected to do all that you can to
help your child, there will come a time when you may not be able to.
That is why it is important that you impart self-reliance in your child
and teach him/her how to deal with diabetes as early as now.
Some
of the basics of diabetes management that you want your child to learn
include:
1) Learning to eat regularly
2) Exercising regularly
3) Taking insulin regularly
4) Monitoring their blood sugar
5) Visiting the doctor regularly
As your child grows older, he/she will
become more self-sufficient and will be making decisions about his/her
treatment and diabetes management on his/her own. He/she may also tend
to go to the doctor alone rather than go with you.
At first, it
might feel unsettling but this is something that you need to be prepared
for. Let things take their normal course, but remain in communication
with the doctor, especially if the child is uncommunicative after a
visit from the clinic. Staying in the know without stepping over any
boundaries is one good way of helping your child cope with diabetes
while at the same time boosting his/her self-esteem and confidence in
handling the condition.
Understand Your Child’s Metabolism
Controlling
blood glucose levels is a difficult thing to do and even more so during
adolescence. Certain bodily changes causes hormone levels in an
adolescent child’s body to fluctuate, affecting his/her metabolism.
Several
studies have shown that the growth hormones, which are activated during
adolescent years to promote the growth of bone and muscle mass, can
affect the action of insulin in the body. This could complicate your
child’s diabetes without proper management.
Another hormone
that is affected is adrenaline, which is also released by the pancreas,
the same as insulin. The function of adrenaline is to stimulate the
release of stored glucose in the body whenever blood sugar levels in the
body start to fall.
All these changes could cause the blood
glucose levels to rise and fall erratically. They could become too low
or too high at a given time and your child may have a difficult time
coping with these fluctuations. It is important that you let your child
know it is not his/her fault that his/her blood glucose levels are too
high or too low, but that is no reason to give up trying to deal with it.