Does Omega-3 Help Insulin Sensitivity?

Is Fish Oil Actually Helpful For Preventing Juvenile Diabetes?

Despite tremendous advances in the management of type 1 diabetes (juvenile diabetes), it is still on the rise and is one of the major causes of mortality and morbidity. Diabetes is etiologically a multi-factorial condition involving various genetic, behavioral, and environmental origins. People with juvenile diabetes should understand the use of correct dietary habits, which have proven to be extremely essential in the regulation of blood sugar.

On the other hand, despite the promising research, current clinical evidence for the use of fish oil for the prevention and management of juvenile diabetes is both limited and conflicting. In this article, we will summarize the most recent findings of practical considerations of dietary sources and the potential benefits and mechanisms of fish oil supplementation for the prevention and management of type 1 diabetes.

Does fish oil prevent the onset of juvenile diabetes?

A recently published report shows that omega-3 oils found in fish such as sardines and trout could prevent the onset of type 1 diabetes in children.

The research which involved 1,700 participants found that children who ate food rich in fish oil reduced their risk of developing juvenile diabetes by up to 50%. The research was based on a clinical study that observed kids who were genetically predisposed to developing diabetes.

Researchers observed how the children’s fish oil intake affects the development of ICA (islet cell autoimmunity), which, if progressed, usually precedes the development of juvenile diabetes.

This study suggests there is a link between the intake of omega-3 fatty acids and the development of juvenile diabetes in kids who are genetically predisposed to the conditions.

Is the claim supported by scientific studies?

This study was conducted by researchers from the University of Florida and the University of Colorado, USA, and published in the American Medical Association Journal. The researchers observed children who had a higher risk of developing juvenile diabetes by having a close relative with diabetes or high-risk genes.

They studied whether the kids developed AIC (Islet Cell Autoimmunity) – where the immune system mistakenly attacks insulin-producing cells – leading to diabetes. They also wanted to learn how the consumption of fish oil affects the risk of developing juvenile diabetes.

A total of 1,770 children were observed over a 12-year study period and the average age at the end of the study was 6.2 years. Their diet was observed from age 2 onwards by assessing what the child eats and whether their diet includes fish oil, specifically omega-3 fatty acids, and how often the child eats food such as salmon, tuna, mackerel, etc. This helped researchers calculate the total amount of fish oil consumed.

The kids were examined at 9, 15, and 24 months and then on an annual basis thereafter for the development of ICA. The researchers then calculated the risk of developing ICA according to fish oil intake. Factors such as socio-demographic factors, total energy intake, age when introduced to foods such as cereals, and the child’s genetic risk were also taken into consideration.

Results of the study

At the end of the study, 58 children of the 1,770 participants developed ICA. The criteria for Islet Cell Autoimmunity was defined to be a condition whereby 1 of 3 antibodies responsible for attacking insulin-producing cells were present on two consecutive tests.

After taking other contributing factors into account, the researchers found that children who consumed an additional 0.8 grams of fish oil per day had a 55% lower risk of developing Islet Cell Autoimmunity.

When the analysis was limited to the kids who had at least one of the antibodies, they observed that the decrease in risk of developing diabetes was even greater. However, they did not observe any effect of omega-6 fatty acids in reducing the risk of ICA.

Interpretations drawn from the results

The researchers concluded that a higher intake of fish oil, specifically omega-3, is linked to a reduced risk of juvenile diabetes, especially in children who are predisposed to the condition. This has been attributed to omega-3’s anti-inflammatory benefits in the body.

Several modern clinical studies are being conducted to validate this hypothesis, which, if confirmed will make fish oil a mainstay for the prevention of type 1 diabetes. Although these findings are interesting and promising, moderation is extremely important, and consuming excessive amounts of any food should be avoided.

This study also suggests the need for further research into the potential links between fish oil and juvenile diabetes risk.

People who have already been diagnosed with diabetes should not interpret the study and reports to mean that consuming fish oil can cure or help improve diabetes symptoms.

Read about how vitamin D can help juvenile diabetes HERE!

Symptoms of Diabetes in Toddlers

Diabetes in toddlers is a serious condition that occurs when their pancreas is not producing enough insulin. Insulin is a very important hormone in the transportation and absorption of glucose in an infant’s body.

This in turn leads to excess glucose and sugar levels in the toddler’s body. Signs of diabetes in babies are hard to pinpoint because it’s hard for toddlers to let their parents know that something is wrong. Therefore, as a parent, you should be on the lookout for various signs that may indicate that your baby has diabetes.

Signs and Symptoms of Diabetes in Toddlers

Fatigue When a child is suffering from diabetes, sugar in their bloodstream is not being converted to energy. Therefore, the baby remains constantly tired or fatigued.
Increased urination. This occurs because the child’s body needs to get rid of excess glucose and sugar through urine. You will notice that your baby may be urinating more than usual or even started wetting the bed again for older babies.
Excessive thirst. The body tissues of a child suffering from undiagnosed diabetes lose a lot of fluid. This leads to the baby having excessive thirst. Some may crave sweet, cold drinks.
Weight loss. A child with undiagnosed diabetes may experience sudden and rapid weight loss. This is because the body can’t use energy from sugar thus experiencing muscle and fat loss.
Increased appetite. A diabetic child’s body is deprived of energy because of the low insulin. This registers in the brain as starvation so the undiagnosed child experiences the feeling of extreme hunger so he/she tends to eat excessively.
Eyesight problems. An undiagnosed child may experience blurred vision. High blood sugar level causes fluids to be pulled from body tissues such as eye lenses. This will cause eyesight problems though a toddler may not know this because they still don’t know what normal is.
Yeast infections. This may show up as a very bad diaper rash, especially in girls.
Diabetic ketoacidosis. This is the buildup of ketones which are acidic by-products. It happens when the body starts to burn fat for energy because the child’s body can’t break down glucose due to low insulin.

Other advanced signs and symptoms of undiagnosed diabetes to look out for may include vomiting, stomach pains, fast breathing, rapid heart rate, low body temperature flushed face, and loss of consciousness.

It’s also essential for parents to check for fruity breath odor. Undiagnosed diabetes in a child can also make them irritable or even exhibit quick mood changes.

If you notice some of these symptoms in your child you should consult a doctor immediately. This is because the sooner it is diagnosed the earlier the treatment will start thus increasing the chances of your baby living a normal, healthy life.

Read more about Juvenile diabetes HERE!

What is a Normal Blood Sugar Level for a Toddler?

Random blood sugar test. This is the main screening test to check whether your toddler has diabetes Type 1. A sample of blood is taken at a random time in the day, not taking into account the last time they ate. A random blood sugar level of 200 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), or 11.1 millimoles per liter (mmol/L), or higher suggests diabetes.

Glycated hemoglobin (A1C) test. The A1C test gives an indication of your toddler’s average blood sugar level over the past few months. This test specifically measures the blood sugar percentage attached to the oxygen-carrying protein in the red blood cells. An A1C level of 6.5 percent or higher on two separate tests indicates diabetes.

Fasting blood sugar test. Your child will fast overnight prior to this blood sample being taken. A fasting blood sugar level of 126 mg/dL (7.0 mmol/L) or higher indicates type 1 diabetes.

Have you ever thought about how a Diabetes Chat room could help you?

Pediatric Diabetes – Caring for a Diabetic Child

In pediatric diabetes, beta cells (special pancreatic cells that make insulin) are destroyed. Insulin is needed in the body to help cells absorb blood glucose for energy. Therefore, without insulin, blood sugar levels rise and can lead to serious health complications.

If you are caring for a diabetic child or teen, it is vital to ensure they are following treatment in order to keep blood glucose levels within the target healthy range. On the other hand, your child’s healthcare team will provide treatment using a diabetes care plan specially tailored for them.

Doctors and researchers are working on a diabetes cure. However, until a cure is found, following a diabetes treatment plan is the only key to a healthy, long life.

Pediatric Diabetes Care Plan

A pediatric diabetes care plan outlines the instructions you, your child, and your caregivers should follow. The plan is designed to help maintain your child’s blood glucose levels within the healthy range.

Parts of a pediatric diabetes care plan.

A diabetes care plan has four main parts:

Checking pediatric blood glucose levels
Administering insulin
Getting physical activity on a regular basis
Eating a balanced, healthy diet while keeping track of carbohydrate intake

Your child’s health care team helps teach you, your child, and your caregivers how the plan works and how you can adhere to it. Although you may have to learn a lot in the beginning, soon enough you’ll master the ins and outs.

What really happens in childhood diabetes?

1. Monitoring pediatric blood glucose levels

One of the most important aspects of managing pediatric diabetes is checking blood glucose daily or as recommended. This can be done in two main ways:

2. Using a CGM (continuous glucose monitor)

A continuous glucose monitor is a wearable device designed to take blood sugar level measurements every few minutes throughout the day. It features a tread-like sensor that is secured in place just under your child’s skin. Most sensors need to be replaced every ten days. The device provides blood glucose readings so often, allowing you and your child’s healthcare teamwork more effectively to keep blood sugar within a healthy range.

Using a blood glucose meter

In most cases, it is recommended that children with type 1 diabetes check their blood sugar levels at bedtime and just before meals. This is 3 times a day, but in some cases, it could be necessary to do it more often. Your child’s personalized diabetes care plan will guide you on how often blood sugar measurements should be checked and what should be done if the blood sugar is too low or too high.

Your child’s diabetes management team uses the blood sugar level trend to adjust the insulin plan over time.

Moreover, the team also uses a hemoglobin A1c or HbA1c test (glycosylated hemoglobin test) to monitor your kid’s blood sugar. The results represent the average blood glucose levels in the 2 or 3 months prior to the test. The HbA1c test helps determine how well your child’s diabetes care plan is working.

It is recommended that diabetics keep the A1c at 7% or below to lower the chances of complications.

3. Taking insulin

All diabetic kids and teens need to take insulin to ensure that blood glucose is absorbed by their cells and used for energy. Your child’s healthcare team will create an insulin schedule customized for your child’s specific condition.

How can children get insulin?

With an insulin pump

An insulin pump continuously administers insulin through a tiny tube secured just under the child’s skin.

By injection

In most cases, children need 4 or more insulin injections daily. The needle is tiny and the shorts are not very uncomfortable or painful. The diabetes management team will guide you on how you can help your kid cope with insulin injections.

The team will also teach you, your child, and your caregivers how to use the insulin pump or do injections.

Healthy diet

Diabetic kids need the right balance of insulin, exercise, and food to maintain their blood sugar levels within the target range. Therefore, it is essential to understand the effects of different foods on your kid’s blood sugar.

The healthcare team will guide you on healthy eating for your child and how to count carbohydrates in snacks and meals. Knowing the number of carbohydrates your child drinks and eats helps you figure out the amount of insulin they require. Moreover, it gives your kid the flexibility to eat and drink as much and as often as they like.

Just like anyone else, your diabetic kids’ diet should include food items that are high in nutrients and low in calories and fat, such as:

Whole grains
Fruits
Lean protein
Vegetables

Your child’s diabetes management team will help you create a custom meal plan that takes your child’s health goals and food preferences into consideration and incorporate occasional treats.

Regular physical activity

Kids need exercise in order to feel good, strengthen their bones and muscle, and keep their blood sugar levels under control. Studies show that regular physical activity helps insulin work more effectively. You can motivate your child to engage in physical activity by exercising with them.

It is essential to keep in mind that physical activity can affect your child’s blood sugar for several hours after exercising, or even overnight. Therefore, you should monitor your child’s blood sugar levels more keenly whenever they begin a new activity in order to understand how their body reacts to the new activity. This will help you determine whether it’s necessary to adjust their insulin doses or meal plan to compensate for the change in activity levels.

The bottom-line

Your child’s healthcare provider will occasionally check your kid’s blood pressure, thyroid function, cholesterol levels, growth, liver function, kidney function, and any other signs of trouble. Sometimes, despite the best efforts problems may arise.

Some complications of pediatric diabetes need to be addressed immediately or they could easily become serious or life-threatening, including hyperglycemia (high blood sugar), hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), DKA (diabetic ketoacidosis)

As you care for a diabetic child, the care team and detailed care plan will help guide you. Following your child’s diabetes health care plan and keeping in touch with your child’s healthcare team is the key to keeping your child healthy.

6 Signs of Childhood Diabetes

Diabetes is an increasingly prevalent chronic disease among children. However, recognizing the signs of diabetes is a challenge for most parents. Childhood diabetes might not be recognized until the child is very ill primarily because the changes are usually subtle and the onset is quite slow.

Although discovering that your child is suffering from diabetes can be distressing for any parent, it is better to find out early enough than to miss the signs of diabetes completely.

What are the signs of diabetes in children?

Unquenchable Thirst

Children with undiagnosed diabetes are constantly thirsty. This is mainly because as blood glucose builds up in the bloodstream, more fluid is pulled from the body tissues. Moreover, these children may crave cold drinks and sweets. In case the water in the blood is not sufficient, the body extracts water from surrounding tissues. Therefore, the body becomes dehydrated and the thirst mechanism kicks in.

Frequent Urination

The urge to urinate a lot is one of the most common early signs of childhood diabetes. In this case, your child goes to the restroom more often than normal or starts wetting the bed all of a sudden even though they were toilet trained before.

Since the child is drinking more, they will also visit the restroom more. However, there can be other reasons for frequent urination such as the inability of the child to empty the bladder completely, urinary tract infection, or Daytime Urinary Frequency Syndrome which is formally known as Pollakiuria.

Rapid Loss in Weight

This is an extreme symptom of diabetes in children mainly because children rarely lose weight. In this case, the child still loses weight even when they continuously consume plenty of food. Weight loss is usually caused by an inadequate supply of energy in the body. Therefore, the body extracts energy from reserved fat stores.

Besides making the immune system weaker, excessive weight loss in children might also result in weakness and tired feelings. Drastic weight loss in children is a very dangerous sign whether diabetes is involved or not and the child should be taken to the doctor immediately.

Yeast Infection

Excessive weight loss makes the immune system weaker and prone to plenty of infections. The child might develop rashes on the skin due to yeast infection. Therefore, it is vital to give your child plenty of water to drink and feed him/her a healthy diet.

Extreme Hunger

A child suffering from diabetes might eat constantly without gaining weight. This can be attributed to the inability of the body to utilize food and in effect, the food simply flows through the child’s digestive system.

Blurred Vision

The decreased level of fluid in the blood and body tissues including the eye lenses might create vision difficulties. This might cause various eyesight problems including blurred vision. Unfortunately, the child might be unable to detect or even complain about problems with their eyesight.

Untreated diabetes might have serious consequences for the child. Some of the short-term risks include hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), hyperglycemia (high blood sugar), and increased ketones in the urine (ketone acidosis).

Some of the lifelong or long-term risks include; nerve and vascular damage, amputations, blindness, and increased risk of stroke and heart attack. Besides identifying the signs of diabetes in children, it is also the parents’ responsibility to ensure that the child gets a proper diagnosis and also takes medication as instructed by the doctor.

Other Signs of Childhood Diabetes

A breath that smells sweet and like fruit is one of the warning signs of childhood diabetes. This symptom can also be sneaky in that it may be explained as absent from the fruity flavored toothpaste that youngsters use as of late or from the nutritious fruit snacks that they’re fed.

The sweet scent of their breath is really a consequence of diabetic ketoacidosis, which is the body’s attempt to get rid of acetone through the respiratory system.

Sweet-smelling breath is often a signal that poisonous ketones (acid by-products of fats being broken down for power) are constructing up inside the entire body. This symptom out of many signs of childhood diabetes is really an indicator that they urgently need diabetes medication.

Get Childhood Diabetes under Control!

Good eating habits and regular exercise, even for your children (and for yourselves as role models) goes a very long way to stabilizing Childhood Diabetes.

Facts On Type 1 Diabetes

Information on type 1 Diabetes isn’t hard to come by nowadays with an entire world of information available on the internet with just a few strokes of the keyboard and clicks of the mouse. Not only is information on type 1 diabetes easier to obtain than ever before, but it also could not have come at a better time as the incidence of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes are certainly on the rise.

Diabetes affects almost 30 million people in the United States alone. Type 2 diabetes accounts for approximately 90% to 95% of the diagnosed cases of diabetes and type 1 diabetes accounts for approximately 5% of the diagnosed cases.

Over the last 20 years or so, the number of diagnosed cases of diabetes in adults has actually doubled as the population in America ages and unfortunately becomes more and more overweight.

So What Causes Type 1 Diabetes?

First of all, diabetes type 1 is not a lifestyle disease. The cause of Type 1 diabetes is unknown and so as a result, it’s not considered preventable.

Some researchers believe that type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease and is characterized by the pancreas not producing insulin, producing it in insufficient quantities, or the cells of the body not responding to the insulin that is produced – the pancreas by the body’s own immune system.

Type 1 diabetes usually manifests itself during childhood or early adulthood, and if not properly cared for, can be quite devastating. Since the body either does not produce or does not respond to insulin, the glucose that is taken in as food can rapidly build in the bloodstream to dangerous levels.

Even though glucose is required by every cell in the body as fuel at higher levels it begins to damage organs and tissues and can cause a variety of negative health effects including coma and even death.

Because of this, the key to the proper management of diabetes is glucose control. Glucose levels are controlled either by dietary means or through the use of medications, or both.

It is therefore a real blessing that organizations like the American Diabetic Association exist, where a person can get actual and factual information on type 1 diabetes and also on type 2 diabetes.

If you think you or someone you know may have signs or symptoms of type 1 diabetes the best place to start is at your personal physician.

How are you diagnosed with diabetes type 1?

The main screening test for type 1 diabetes is a random blood sugar test. This test measures glucose levels at any point during the day and can indicate the result quite quickly – especially important for those who are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and need urgent supplementary insulin.

2. The AC1 test gives a reading of the patient’s average blood glucose levels over a period of 2 or 3 months.

3. Fasting Blood sugar test. This is when a sample of blood is taken and tested after your child has been fasting overnight.

4. You may have your blood tested for autoantibodies which are substances that indicate your body may be attacking itself. Another indication of diabetes type 1 is the production of ketones which are produced when your body burns fat for energy. Your doctor may recommend this test also if he suspects diabetes type 1.

Your personal physician can do these tests for the disease quickly and easily.

How long can you live with diabetes type 1?

Research has shown that people with type 1 diabetes have a life expectancy of around 11 years less than average, most people who have type 1 diabetes will eventually die from the complications of the disease such as heart disease.

If you can look after your body, follow a healthy lifestyle that helps prevent heart disease, and keep control of your blood sugar levels, these figures above may certainly change.

Is diabetes type 1 a genetic disease? (Can it be inherited)

Yes, there are strong genetic links with diabetes type 1. The risk is certainly higher with one’s first-degree relatives ie parents, child, or sibling.

What is the best food for type 1 diabetes?

If you have diabetes type 1, you should eat a lot of fresh vegetables, fruits, lentils, beans, brown rice, quinoa, oatmeal, and whole wheat. You should also include protein-packed foods such as legumes, eggs, dairy, tofu, seafood, lean meat, and chicken in your healthy meal plan.

Tips for when you eat out, with diabetes type 1

Always ask for sauces to be served on the side – so then you have a choice as to whether you add it, how much to add, or leave it off altogether.

Opt for broiled, baked grilled, or roasted dishes and avoid fried dishes altogether.
Go for the ‘broth-based soups’ as opposed to rich creamy soups.
Try and avoid too much cheese – If you can go without it, even better.
Go for fruit sorbets or fresh fruits for dessert.
Have vegetable or tomato toppings on your pasta.

Read more about Juvenile Diabetes Here!