I have a teenage daughter with diabetes and it has been heartbreaking watching her first get ill, then be diagnosed, then finally begin the daily struggle of living with the disease.
Unfortunately diabetes in teenagers is fast on the rise, mainly due to the increase in worldwide obesity rates. Whereas Type 1 diabetes used to be the most common form of diabetes in teens, which used to be known as juvenile diabetes, nowadays type 2 diabetes is just as common, if not more so.
A whopping 2.7 million American teens have prediabetes, which then leads down the heartwrenching path to type 2 diabetes.
Teens can also develop other forms of diabetes, such as secondary diabetes and maturity-onset diabetes of the young. Diabetes is hard for anyone to deal with, but particularly so for a teenager because their fluctuating hormones can make their blood glucose levels harder to control and of course the pressures of ‘fitting in’ and having fun with friends can make it a nuisance to stick to the strict regime.
Alcohol and drug use, smoking, sex and pregnancy, exercise and eating disorders can all have an adverse affect on diabetes care. Girls may experience glucose fluctuations related to their menstrual cycle and may develop conditions such as polycystic ovarian syndrome.
I have set this site up to make parents more aware of the facts and to give teenage diabetics somewhere to go for information in a fun and informal way.
