From Your Health Journal…..”Great article today from the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Channel 10 (abc-tv) about diabetes rising in children. Please visit the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Channel 10 web sites to read the great stories, as I have enjoyed many article from their sites. Links are provided below. The article being reviewed today discusses the rise in type 2 diabetes in children. As you know, type 2 diabetes in most cases is environmental, so when children pack on the pounds, they increase their risk of getting this disease. More than 20,000 adolescents and teens in the United States now have Type 2 diabetes, compared with almost none 20 years ago. And the worst might be ahead. Diagnoses of the disease among young people could climb 400 percent by 2050. Please visit the Star Tribune and 10 News to read this heartwarming story about a young child who just found out she had type 2 diabetes.”

From the article…..

On learning she had Type 2 diabetes and would need to adopt a healthful diet for the rest of her life, Lavon Swygert did the only thing that felt natural.

The 13-year-old hid at home and gorged on potato chips.

“I’m not going to lie,” she said. “There were, like, 12 little packs of Pringles.”

Lavon’s response underscores why doctors are so troubled by the sharp increase in Type 2 diabetes that is emerging among adolescents and teens. It reveals the medical toll that doctors have long feared from the nation’s youth-obesity epidemic. Worse, it pairs a disorder that can be managed only by disciplined diet and exercise with a young, impulsive population that likes to snack.

More than 20,000 adolescents and teens in the United States now have Type 2 diabetes, compared with almost none 20 years ago. And the worst might be ahead. Diagnoses of the disease among young people could climb 400 percent by 2050, according to a federal estimate released in December, because the disease is tied to the rising rate of childhood obesity.

Type 2 diabetes, diagnosed mainly in adults until now, is the gradual erosion of the body’s production of insulin, which leaves excess sugar in the bloodstream and gives rise to a host of complications and organ failures. It’s among a growing number of adult health problems that are increasingly afflicting kids, including hypertension and high cholesterol.

“It’s like your child has the body of a 70-year-old man,” said Dr. Claudia Fox, an obesity specialist at the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital.

Part of the problem is that Type 2 diabetes often comes with relatively few initial symptoms, so teens can go years without a diagnosis. Even when the problem is discovered, as in Lavon’s case, teenagers often don’t initially feel the consequences of straying from diets and treatments.

To read the full article…..Click here