Prevention of Diabetes
As a parent, we all want to prevent bad things from happening to our kids that happened to us, right? When I was 32 years old, I was diagnosed with diabetes. It sucks to know that there were missed red flags and missed opportunities for changing risk factors. My mission is to use my knowledge to prevent the same fate to my child... and share with you how can you do the same?
What were some missed red flags and does this actually happen in the doctor’s office?
Yes, definitely.
At age 15, my mom asked for a Hemoglobin AIC check for diabetes (because her dad had it) and it was 5.5. Clearly this was too high for a low body fat athlete. So what did my doc do... he said to stop eating so much sugar. What should he have done? rechecked me in 3 years and guided me to a Type 1 autoantibody testing trial (that was going on locally in Wichita)
At the age of 20, I was pregnant and I failed two glucose tolerance checks... routine checks for diabetes in pregnancy at 20 weeks... So what did my doc do... he passed me on the second test because it was “marginal.” What should he have done? At the very least, checked me 6 weeks after pregnancy.
At the age of 25, my grandpa with diabetes checked my blood sugar and it was a 195 after eating lettuce, turkey cheese and ranch. So I went to the doctor and what test did he do? A fasting glucose... and duh, that was normal... he used the wrong test... he should have done a two hour post prandial glucose check. If there were CGMs back then, then that would have been the best option of course.
What can you do to prevent diabetes for yourself or your child?
1. Get a diabetes specific lab check if your child, young or your adult child, has risk factors for diabetes... family history, overweight, poor eating habits, etc.
2. Get that test interpreted by an expert
3. Set an example for healthy eating, staying trim, and healthy lifestyle choices.
4. Get a continuous glucose monitor...
5. Genetic testing... depending, but epigenetics are actually more important.
6. If overweight, then get an insulin level
Were there things that I could have implemented?
Yes there were. But I never came into contact with any experts, so that opportunity never existed for me.
What am I going to do for my child to prevent this?
I have done too many things to list. One very important area of research about using Omega 3 and Vit D comes from the Grassroots D*Action Project at https://www.grassrootshealth.net/blog/type-1-diabetes-progression-halted-vitamin-d-omega-3/
My child had a moderate risk of type 2 diabetes due to multifactorial genes found in the DNA and me 23 test and he was found to have autoantibodies for Type 1 diabetes (I requested for his doctor to check them)...
Follow my upcoming posts using a continuous glucose monitor in my child. If you are interested in some research about using the CGM for prevention go to
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30844073/
