Just 30 years ago diabetes was an old person’s problem but no longer. Young people who are not even yet into their teens are being diagnosed in frightening numbers. In just 10 years the incidence of children needing medication for diabetes has increased a whopping 150 percent.
This situation has become so serious that one in three children is predicted to develop diabetes before they turn 18. If they have been born after the year 2000 they are likely to have a 20-30 year shortened lifespan. This generation will be the first in recorded history to NOT outlive their parents.
The devastating disease of diabetes is mostly hidden but each time a child eats something high in sugar a surge of insulin is produced to bring the blood sugar level back down to a safe level. But because the children of today live a sedentary lifestyle and the main villain here is something with a screen – video games, television, or computers there is no use for the sugar in the bloodstream.
Normally sugar in the blood gets processed by the muscle cells for energy but seeing the muscles are not being used there is no where for the sugar to go. So, it circulates round the body hand in hand with the hormone that is supposed to control it – insulin – doing damage to sensitive cells and tissues in major organs like the heart, kidneys and eyes. You do not actually die from diabetes you die from the damage it causes to your body. .
There is a much recognized link between becoming overweight and/or obese, a no exercise lifestyle and diabetes. Overweight children used to be rarely seen but now they are everywhere. In the past three decades childhood obesity has more than tripled.
How can this be happening you say – what is causing this epidemic and destroying our children’s health?
For starters we can look towards us the adults, we are the ones that are supposed to be leading the way and teaching our children how to be healthy so they do not have shortened lives. We need to clean up our own act before it filters down to the younger ones. What are we doing to encourage children to be more active? Is buying them another video game or the latest electronic gadget doing them any good?
Should we not lead by example and take positive steps ourselves that include proper exercise and healthy eating? By doing that many of the diseases and ‘chronic lifestyle conditions’ like heart disease, cancer and diabetes associated with sedentary living will not take out our children before their time. Inactive children become inactive adults.
The other important factor is what quality of food are you allowing yourself and your children to eat? Does it come in pretty boxes and packets with little to zero nutrition loaded with chemicals and other junk that overwhelms their growing bodies?
What you should be doing is to teach them to eat well. This has to be the greatest gift you can give a child. Teach them that real food does not have a food label. Things like a piece of grass-fed beef, a tomato, a piece of fish from the ocean, a sweet potato, a bunch of spinach, free range poultry or eggs or an orange.
Teach them how to cook these foods from scratch and protect them from the man made sugars, harmful fats and chemicals that are ruining their health. They will thank you later when they pass the same good nutrition and exercise habits on to their own children and we start to move away from the epidemic of misery we have in essence created for children being born today. Don’t we owe this to them?
This so true. America has led the world to this shocking epidemic. Doctors are not gods that know everything. Their drugs are mostly poison to our bodies. I believe America has a law that only drugs can cure disease, not natural foods. Good fats are essential for our body and some cholesterol is needed for our brain to function.Our society needs to remember the good natural foods that our grand parents ate. No GMO’s back then.
Peter