Our Kids Are Falling Prey To A Pandemic, And It’s Not COVID-19
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This article is an informational piece on the rising cases of Type 2 diabetes in younger children and teens. Although backed by factual reports, it is not an indicator of your child’s health. Please contact a pediatric endocrinologist for more support.
Diabetes is often called a silent pandemic. With every 1 in 10 people suffering from either of the two types of diabetes and every 1 in 3 people exhibiting pre-diabetes signs, this seems to be an accurate description. The American Diabetes Association Diabetes Alert Day®, observed annually on the fourth Tuesday in March, aims to give a “wake-up call” to bring to your attention the seriousness of diabetes and how you can reduce the risk of developing the chronic condition.
My point of focus in this article is on the risk of diabetes in teens and younger children. While Type 1 is the more dominant diabetes to be affecting children, the past decade has seen a surge of Type 2 in patients aged under 18.
Type 1 diabetes was traditionally thought of as juvenile diabetes. It is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system mistakes pancreatic cells that secrete insulin as a foreign body and attempts to destroy it. It’s merely an unfortunate combination of genetics and environmental triggers.
Type 2 diabetes, also called adult-onset diabetes, is influenced by lifestyle, including body mass index, sedentary lifestyle, genetics, and diet.
It tends to be more common in older people because their pancreas is starting to wear out. So habitually, we thought of Type 1 diabetes as a child’s disease and Type 2 diabetes as an adult disease.
In recent years, that has started to change. There has been an increase in Type 2 diabetes in children and teenagers. Back in the 1980s, Type 2 diabetes under the age of 18 was unheard of. Now, it’s increasing by about 3% each year!
The rise in Type 2 Diabetes among youth is entirely due to lifestyle factors. Pediatric obesity and a sedentary routine seem to be the culprits behind children under 18 contracting type 2 diabetes.
Can Childhood Type 2 Diabetes Be Prevented?
The key to preventing type 2 diabetes in children -- and adults for that matter -- is avoiding obesity. With a pandemic at hand, this sounds easier said than done, but baby steps towards a more balanced routine can help tremendously in this regard.
Most importantly, you as a parent will need to take the first step towards a healthier lifestyle, and your children will eventually follow suit, if not immediately. So, the next set of helpful tips that I have, are aimed at the parents, as bringing about a total shift in the household is the best way to deal with a child’s health, rather than singling out the struggling kid and expecting them to adhere to healthier routines.
Make family dinners a priority. Research shows that children who share mealtimes with their parents are healthier and happier. Eat at the table instead of in front of a screen. Maintain standard portion sizes.
Start with healthier meals. Nothing beats a nutritious home-cooked meal from scratch with local and fresh ingredients. Cook at home as much as you can and meal prep in advance for days when you cant. TexasRealFood has a whole directory dedicated to places you can source your fresh veggies and fruits from. Make sure to add plenty of fiber in your family’s meals to control blood glucose levels.
Take a walk! Get that much needed daily physical exercise with your children. A fun family run in an open space can do wonders for managing pre-diabetes and mental health. Unless you prioritize it and stick to physical exercise every day, it is very easy to miss!
Opt for healthier snacking choices. Skip the morning breakfast bars (how long do breakfast bars last?), and try these simple overnight oats (how long do oats last?) for a nutritious start to the day. If your kids are old enough, they can fix these exciting and healthy snacks themselves!
Cut down all processed sugar and processed foods that have high amounts of added sugars. Fruit juices and sugary sodas are a big NO! Honestly, just throw them out. They do you no good. Check out these healthier alternatives for white sugar.
If you have to pick, always go for the full-fat dairy. Low-fat options skim the fats and amp up the sugar. That is not what we want. We want growing kids to have healthy fats in moderate quantities for well-rounded development.
Don’t get into a power struggle over food. It’s not worth it. Your job as a parent is to provide the options. You can’t ‘make’ a child eat the food you want them to, which is fine. It takes a lot of effort, time, patience and love to get everyone on the same page. Let go of the guilt and work towards a better tomorrow.
There is an ongoing sense of despair and misery all around. Hearing and watching adults talk about the pandemic, illness, financial troubles etc., can affect children mentally. Sit down with them and discuss the issues your family is facing and how you plan to navigate them. Assure that no matter how dire the situation is, they should always let you know if they experience any lingering discomfort, physically or otherwise.
Practice mindfulness as you enjoy meals with your children. Did you know that there are foods that help beat away the blues young children feel now and then?
Programs in Texas Dealing with Pediatric Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes
Imagine Camp, American Diabetes Association
ADA Imagine Camp is designed by the American Diabetes Association to connect youth with diabetes to make new friends, build confidence and independence in management, and to join in traditions from camps, partners, and programs across the country. During COVID-1, ADA is facilitating an at-home, virtual experience connecting youth and families with diabetes. Offered Monday through Friday, these daily 1-hour virtual meetups for kids ages 5–17 are completely free of cost. The ADA Imagine Camp activities are offered in four one-week sessions in June and July as well as additional year-round activities. ADA Imagine Camp connects kids to adventure, education, mentors, and fun!
Camp New Day, Diabetes Foundation of the High Plains
The Diabetes Foundation of the High Plains’ supports families with diabetic children. Their efforts include immediate assistance for families suddenly affected by a diagnosis of diabetes, as well as ongoing assistance to help families adjust to this life-altering diagnosis.
Each summer, Camp New Day presents a local camp for children with diabetes in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. The one-week camp is an effort to provide a camp close to home, making it easier for children and teens to attend this exciting opportunity.
Camp Bluebonnet, Children’s Diabetes Camp of Central Texas
The Children’s Diabetes Camp of Central Texas supports Camp Bluebonnet that accommodates the unique health needs of kids who have diabetes and their families. Camp Bluebonnet programs are for anyone affected by diabetes to come together-- lend support, learn effective diabetes management tools and coping strategies, but most importantly, have a lot of fun.
Bienestar Health Program, The Social and Health Research Center
The Social and Health Research Center (SAHRC) was established by Dr. Roberto Treviño, a physician, in 1991. Today, this non-profit center is committed to reducing obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease in the community. SAHRC aims to develop and implement health programs to prevent and manage these conditions and design evaluation tools to assess program effectiveness.
The SAHRC runs the Bienestar pre-kindergarten to 8th grade coordinated school health program for children. The Bienestar Health Program was developed to reduce or prevent type 2 diabetes mellitus in low-income children. It is an organized curriculum for children at high risk of type 2 diabetes. The program's coordinated curriculums are designed for health class, physical education, school food service and parents. The health program has resulted in decreased blood glucose and insulin levels; decreased obesity rates and dietary fat intake; and increased dietary fiber intake and fitness levels in children. The Bienestar is adopted as an official health curriculum by the Texas Education Agency and has been recognized as Proven Effective by the National Cancer Institute, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Healthy Communities Institute.
When Pandemics Collide
Health experts in America have observed a significant increase in cases of pediatric Type 2 diabetes over the last year compared to 2019.
This rise is fueled by the weight gain noticed in kids due to the pandemic’s forced sedentary lifestyle. It’s been an extraordinarily challenging year for our children, and a few pounds up or down has hardly been of concern for many parents trying to keep their families safe from the contagious disease. Surely, it is an issue we can deal with once we get out of this situation?
Unfortunately, the pandemic created the perfect environment for children to gain weight, and they have. And it is not something that will correct itself out with time.
The closure of schools, lockdowns and financially struggling parents has disrupted children’s nutrition and daily routine. Deprived of the right kind of nutrition and an adequate amount of physical activity, obesity, cholesterol levels, and high blood pressure in children has skyrocketed. The last year also brought with-it record-breaking unemployment levels and food insecurity. As parents tried to make ends meet with budget cuts, many were forced to compromise on nutrition, turning to cheaper, processed, and high-calorie foods.
Staying at home for days at end exacerbated snacking and screen time, with little to no brisk physical activity. As a result, not only have providers seen an uptick in cases of Type 2 diabetes, but the cases of both types have also presented more severely.
Both types of diabetes present with similar symptoms; however, patients presenting with new-onset diabetes have been sicker during the pandemic, coming in with significant dehydration, high blood sugar levels, and high ketones leading to diabetic ketoacidosis.
Over the last few months, doctors also noticed previously healthy children develop elevated markers for pre-diabetes and diabetes and children who are ‘dieting’ to curb their weight gain. Mental health issues like anxiety and depression and the air of negativity in many homes have made it harder for kids to maintain an active and optimistic routine.
Pediatric Obesity, and Its Relationship with Type 2 Diabetes
In the United States, 18.5% of children aged 2 to 19, or 13.7 million kids, currently are obese. This statistic is an alarming condition that explains many more health complications we see in children nowadays.
No one is immune to the risk of growing up at an unhealthy weight. Childhood obesity cuts across all communities of race, ethnicity, and household income. Alarmingly, the obesity problem strikes at an early age, starting with overfeeding of babies and toddlers, which cultivates pre-school aged kids’ unhealthy eating habits.
So, What is The Connection Between Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes?
Insulin produced by the pancreas helps our cells absorb glucose from the blood. In a non-diabetic person, the liver is sensitive enough to even slight spikes in blood glucose. One of the primary mechanisms behind type 2 diabetes is a decrease in insulin sensitivity. When tissues and cells lose sensitivity to insulin, the result is damage to the metabolic foundation that helps adjust blood sugar levels. As the body starts to resist insulin, the liver responds by producing more to get the job done. At this level, a person is already pre-diabetic or insulin resistant. When this condition worsens, the insulin is no longer able to suck the glucose out of the blood, which causes a high level of glucose to be retained in the bloodstream, resulting in several health risks that are the classic symptoms of diabetes type 2.
In the U.S., More than 30 million people are living with diabetes, and more than 200,000 of those younger than 20 years are living with diagnosed diabetes. Between the years 2002 and 2012, newly diagnosed type-1 diabetes in youth increased by close to 2 per cent, but the rate of newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes increased to five per cent. And in kids, the disease progresses more rapidly.
As we begin to foresee a post-pandemic world, we have the opportunity to make some lasting improvements to our children’s health and ensure that living with Type 2 diabetes is something our kids don’t have to worry about.
If you are concerned that your children may be at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, you can follow these links for additional information.
https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/type2.html
