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Did you know it’s National Diabetes Awareness Month? Take this opportunity to get answers to your questions. It’s also a great time to share information with others about diabetes.
Want the facts? Check out the NDEP Diabetes Facts webpage.
http://www.ndep.nih.gov/diabetes-facts/index.aspx
Halloween…a holiday totally focused on consuming candy. It is a rough holiday for people with diabetes. JDRF has some Trick-or-Treat tips to help you survive the holiday.
http://www.jdrf.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewPage&page_id=BE230D09-1279-CFD5-A781BCE9D66E6061
Check out the Holidays and Special Events module of HealthSims Type 1 Diabetes Training for more tips!
Tip of the Week:
When your child has diabetes, you might feel that the only way to control things is to do everything yourself. You might actually have better results by transitioning some responsibility to your child. Here are some tips from parents who have involved their child in the day-to-day diabetes responsibilities like carb counting and how they feel their children have “bought in.” Find more like this in the HealthSims Type 1 Diabetes training course.
My son knows how to count carbs for each meal. He reads the nutrition label and knows where to find the serving size for the carbs. He also knows his limit of carbs for each meal. If you don’t stick to the diet planned, you will not be able to get your diabetes under control! - Melissa, mother of a 9 year old with diabetes
We taught our son how to read the food labels as soon as he was able to read. We had him look at the “Total Carbs” section and the “Sugars” section on the label. He knew he could not eat foods where the sugars were more than half of the total carbs for snacks - especially at bedtime. We also taught him the same process for selecting a breakfast cereal. They should be low in “Sugars” compared to “Total Carbs.” - Dana mother of a child diagnosed at age 3
Tip of the Week:
Summer is here and so is vacation packing anxiety. In addition to making sure you include swimsuits, sunscreen, and snorkle, if someone in your family has type 1 diabetes, you have a lot of other supplies to pack. Here are some tips to ease your packing stress so you can concentrate on building sandcastles and snapping photos instead of stressing about where you packed the lancets. Find more like this in the HealthSims Type 1 Diabetes training course.
Pack insulin and other diabetes supplies across multiple people’s carry-on luggage, so that if someone loses a bag, you don’t lose all of your supplies. Also, take copies of your prescriptions for critical supplies, and always bring with you the contact information for your physician(s), diabetes educator, clinic, and/or any other people who are involved in your diabetes care.
Everyone is talking about Sotomayor this week and whether or not she’s the right choice for the next U.S. Supreme Court Justice. All that aside, have you seen the news that she has Type 1 Diabetes? Is it relevant to her nomination? Many people are weighing in on it, and the discussion has Type 1 Diabetes (and the related healthcare advancements) in the news.
Tip of the Week:
The end of school is here yet again, and naturally, there are lots of sweets and treats. Here are some tips from a mother who has been through this quite a few times. Find more like this in the HealthSims Type 1 Diabetes training course.
Volunteer to bring the beverages for the party and select sugar free or bring a sugar free drink for your child only. Or let your child pick “one sweet treat” with some extra insulin for the end of year party, and bring the other items home for snacks when you can work them into your plan. - Dana, mother of a son with diabetes
Tip of the Week:
There are lots of tricks to counting carbs, and the more you do it, the easier it is.
Here’s a carb counting tip from a grandmother who has learned a lot about carb counting in the last seven years. Find more like this in the HealthSims Type 1 Diabetes training course.
My grandson likes his grilled cheese and other sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Remember that doing that inpacts the carb count of the bread. We figured out that cutting the crusts off our bread reduced the carbs from 16 a slice to 10 a slice by weighing the bread slice before and after. - Dee, grandmother of a child with diabetes
Tip of the Week:
As the weather warms and kids start dreaming about long summer days, parents of children with diabetes know there are some challenges in their not too distant future. It isn’t easy keeping blood sugar numbers stabilized during long days at an amusement park or water park.
Check out these tips about amusement parks and find more like these in the HealthSims Type 1 Diabetes training course.
Long ago I learned that some parks have special passes for people with medical conditions. These passes make it possible for my daughter to not wait in line for a very long time. You should check with the park when you arrive to see if they have something similar. - Lisa, mother of a 15 year old with diabetes
Disney is great about helping people with type 1 diabetes. My nephew got a guest assistance pass so he didn’t have to wait in long lines in the sun with his insulin pump. They also had a very nice first aid station. - Pennie, aunt of a type 1 diabetic
With all of this talk of swine flu, I am reminded that my son was diagnosed with type 1 a few weeks after having the flu. He tested positive in December of 2000 for the flu then in January of 2001 was showing symptoms of type 1. We didn’t know at the time that he had a genetic predisposition because my husband and I are both adopted. Later when we found my birth father’s family, we learned that he had a brother who had type 1, giving our family a genetic predisposition to the disease. The flu was the trigger that sent the white blood cells off to attack the pancreas. I know we could not have avoided all sickness and thus avoided type 1, but it does make the flu an especially negative thought for me!
Did you hear the news story about brown fat today? Although it was previously thought that only infants had brown fat, a new article in The New England Journal of Medicine indicates that nearly all adults have some amount of this brown fat which is activated by cold weather. There is some really interesting research about how to convert fat in the human body to brown fat which consumes calories and generates heat. Dr. C. Ronald Kahn, head of the section on obesity and hormone action at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston is quoted in this article. After you read this, you might consider lowering the temperature in your office a few degrees!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/health/research/09fat.html?ref=health