The Prevalence of Diabetes in Children

The Prevalence of Diabetes in Children

Topic: Diabetes and Obesity in Children

Audience: Parents of young children

Purpose: Inform the reader of type 2 diabetes and it's prevalence in children.

Meet Tommy. He is the average American boy, just with a few extra pounds on him. Tommy's hobbies include playing video games and eating unhealthy foods. His mom or he doesn't know this yet, but he has type 2 diabetes. He is part of the 9.6 percent of Americans under the age of twenty that have developed diabetes. Due to Tommy's poor eating and exercising habits he has developed this life long disease. What if Tommy was your child? Do you know if your children have type 2 diabetes or not?

Type 2 diabetes, formerly referred to as adult onset diabetes, has recently been becoming more and more common in children. In the 1970's it was taught as being a disease of aging that usually comes on gradually and starts to become noticeable around the age of fifty. Before the mid 1990's it was extremely rare to ever diagnose a child with Type 2 diabetes. Now, according to the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, 20.6 Americans under the age of 20 have diabetes and are twice as likely to die as someone who doesn't have diabetes. Adding to the problem is the average young American that has type 2 diabetes rarely shows any significant symptoms and therefore is rarely diagnosed.

Like always, our society is changing. With change comes good and bad. The good is that we have to technology to treat type 2 diabetes. The bad is that technology is making us lazier and our society has become more and more about fatty foods and video games. The main cause of type 2 diabetes in children is obesity. Obesity seems to be sweeping America not only in children but adults as well. 58 million Americans are overweight and another 40 million are obese. According to the American Obesity Association, 30.3 percent of children in America are overweight and 15.3 percent are obese. That is basically one in every six children in America at severe risk for type 2 diabetes. Over 90 percent of people with type 2 diabetes are obese or overweight. (C Doty)

So we know obesity is a problem, but what is it and what does it have to do with type 2 diabetes? Obesity is when someone has a large amount of extra body fat and is there for at risk to serious diseases. To determine if someone is obese, a doctor would have to use the body mass index or BMI. The doctor would get the person's height and weight to make up the BMI and then plot the number on a specific chart to see how it compares to a person of the same gender and age. Someone who is higher than the 95% of that chart is considered obese.

When a person becomes overweight or obese it throws off their whole internal system including the pancreas. The pancreas is a gland that regulates insulin and insulin regulates the metabolism of glucose and glucose is our body's fuel. So, in a healthy person, the insulin and glucose should be equal. Our bodies work like this: we eat and the glucose level in our bloodstream rises, sensors in the pancreas detect this rise in glucose and then it release the corresponding amount of insulin needed. Insulin is needed for glucose to reach the cells and give them food. When ever insulin is released it latches onto cells and tells the cells to let the glucose in. Once the glucose levels in the bloodstream lowers because all the cells have sucked it up, the pancreas stops producing insulin. This whole complicated process is just so the blood sugar levels remain at a steady level. When a person becomes obese and gets diabetes, the cells stop letting insulin "latch on" therefore not letting glucose in and the blood sugar level becoming unsteady.

I know that this kind of doesn't seem like a big deal, I mean why does our blood sugar levels have to be steady? Nausea, confusion, blurred vision, difficulty speaking, depression, and an overall feeling of sickness are all symptoms of irregular blood sugar levels. Another big problem is diabetes, which can lead to damage in the heart, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys, and nerves and can even cause death. One story I recently read was about a woman in her 60's who had been fight type 2 diabetes all of her life. She was five feet two inches tall and weighed 250 pounds. She has such bad diabetes that she ended up having to get a foot amputated and lost feeling in one of her hands.

So how can we stop ourselves and the people we love from becoming overweight and obese? First we need to identify the causes. Society has played a big part in the rise in obesity. Our country has made it easier to get fatty fast foods than healthy food. In our society it is acceptable to not go to the gym and spend our Saturdays in front of the television. Another cause is our school's food. All though this is a topic that has gotten a lot of attention and is becoming better, it has established bad eating habits in many children. Finally technology has played a big part in Americans becoming lazier. Everything can be done over the computer; shopping, communicating, work, and games make it so that you don't ever want to get up from the desk. Children are becoming addicted to video games and come home from school and dash straight towards