EMERGENCY BLOG POST

THE AMERICANPOWER NETWORK MOVEMENT
PRESENTS:

TYPE 1 DIABETES IN KIDS AND PREVENTION?

This is a blog post that will discuss Type 1 diabetes in kids. It is part of our ongoing series on health. This series of blog posts will focus on diabetes and helping Americans either try and prevent or help to live with and cope with both types of diabetes. As always, after this blog post please tell us if you know of any youngsters who have to cope with Type 1 diabetes. We want to educate, inspire and motivate people to learn to live with and prosper with living with diabetes. Please share your thoughts with us. Also, please support our American cultural excellence and American cultural achievement movement by going to our store at www.cafepress.com/AmericanPower and purchase some of our American cultural luxury merchandise and apparel.

Type 1 diabetes, a disease that is striking a growing number of kids is very serious. Type 1 can lead to debilitating medical complications. Type 1 diabetes, also known as Juvenile Diabetes. It is an autoimmune disease that catches most people by the age of 20.

A person's body's immune system turns on itself and destroys the cells in the pancreas that make insulin. When these Beta cells are destroyed, patients must be given insulin in order to regulate their blood sugar. This is partly genetic. Four percent of relatives of people with Type 1 diabetes have measurable risk factors when they are screened.

People that have Type 1 diabetes must check in with their blood glucose level and take insulin several times a day. Over time, they are at risk for blindness and kidney failure.

Type 2 diabetes is linked to obesity. Exercising or losing weight has not been shown to stave off or stop and reverse Type 1.

Between 1.3 million to 2.6 million people in the U.S. have Type 1 diabetes. That accounts for 5%-10% of the diabetes population at large. Type 1 has been rising in the U.S. and Europe by about 2.5%-4% each year, especially in kids, according to peer reviewed medical journals.

How Type 1 is triggered is not understood fully. It is different in each patient.

Researchers want to stave off the disease during the time after the patient has started showing signs of immunologic damage to the body's insulin producing cells, before they are lost in so many cells that they need to be given insulin. Doctors say that preventing further damage to the Beta cells, allowing the dysfunctional ones to recover could potentially delay the disease.

This is your chance to contribute to this uniquely American movement. What did we not cover? Where else should researchers focus to help kids with prevention or with living with diabetes? Please let us know. This is only the start of an important conversation.

All information was provided by:

The Wall Street Journal
The American Diabetes Foundation
Richard Insel, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation

WHAT PARENTS SHOULD LOOK FOR IN CHILDREN AS POSSIBLE SIGNS OF TYPE 1 DIABETES:
-EXCESSIVE DRINKING AND URINATION
-INCREASED EATING
-WEIGHT LOSS
-GREATER FATIGUE THAN USUAL