Having established last week that it is not recommended to allow children to have an excessive sugar intake. This week I would like to move on and along and look into different types of diabetes and its causes. There are two different types of diabetes. The first type is commonly seen amongst the younger generation – Type 1 diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes. This is when the immune system does not produce any hormones that produce insulin. When eating, these hormones usually kick into action in order to absorb the sugar from the blood, but because there is no insulin in the body therefore it cannot perform its function. It cannot be explained why this occurs but there are some suggestions as to what the causes are.

The other type of diabetes is the one seen amongst the older generation – Type 2 diabetes or non-insulin-dependent diabetes. This type of diabetes is when the blood rejects the insulin in the body or when the insulin levels are far too low. This illness is either genetic or is common and tends to affect adults over 40 and overweight people, although it is now becoming commoner amongst younger people. Type 2 diabetes occurs more frequently in people of South Asian and African-Caribbean descent.
Diabetes in children is fast becoming common spread. The trigger for this is excessive calorie and sugar intake. At the same time, it causes the child to overgrow and develop too early and at a fast pace.
Professor Dr Gisela Dahguistin, from the Umea University carried out an experiment involving 100000 children with diabetes. Her research involved children from the 0-14 age range in 1983, 19991 and 1992 to 2000. Her finding were that; 0-4 year olds had a 40%, 5 to 10 year olds had a 21% and 10-14 year olds had a 14% increase in the case of diabetes. According to another piece of research in-between 1978 and 2002 diabetes amongst children increased by 50%. Currently over 3 million people in the UK have with diabetes.
These statistics are interesting but sad to see. With the junk food and fast food trade increasingly becoming widespread and popular this correlates with the increase of a sugar intake affected illness. The last 30 years has seen a threefold increase in the number of cases of childhood diabetes.
This is especially worrying in respect of the rising numbers of children and teenagers with Type 2 diabetes, which was once only seen in older people. This trend is likely to reflect the rising obesity levels in young people over the same time period.

This means that children 5 years old and under will have to use insulin injections and this will have to continue until the rest of their lives. One of the biggest causes of this increased sugar intake is the baby food that is loaded with sugars. This overloading of energy then causes diabetes. In this case as a parent your duty is to make every attempt to feed your children and babies homemade food with natural products. Prevention is better than a cure which sadly does not even exist at the moment. Children are gems so we must take good care of them. Take good care of yourself and family.