Periodontal Disease And Diabetes

The term periodontal disease describes a group of localized infections that affect the tissue surrounding and supporting the teeth. The two most common forms of periodontal disease are gingivitis and periodontitis. Gingivitis, an early and reversible condition, is an inflammation of the soft tissues surrounding the teeth. Persons with gingivitis have tender, edematous, red gums that may bleed upon gentle pressure, such as from toothbrushing.

Periodontitis is a progressive inflammatory condition that destroys periodontal ligament fibers and alveolar bone and can eventually cause tooth loss. Although gingivitis usually precedes periodontitis, not all gingivitis progresses to periodontitis.

For all persons, the keys to preventing periodontal disease are good oral hygiene and regular dental care. A third element crucial to persons with diabetes is good glycemic control; poorly controlled diabetes can invite or promote periodontal disease.

Children And Adolescents Diabetes Care

Diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases to affect children. Every day more than 200 children are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, requiring them to take multiple daily insulin shots and monitor the glucose levels in their blood. It is increasing at a rate of 3% each year among children and rising even faster in pre-school children at a rate of 5% per year. Currently, over 500,000 children under the age of 15 live with diabetes, according to IDF.

Since diabetes often requires life-long monitoring, care and treatment, is hospital-based approach better than home-based care approaches or a mix of these two approaches for effectively responding to care needs of those with diabetes? Hospital-based approach should be for the management of acute and/or chronic complications arising out of diabetes. But as 99% of diabetes care is self-care, empowering people with right information can make home-based care approach more feasible and economical.

Managing diabetes in children and adolescents becomes more effective when the entire family gets involved. Families should be encouraged to share their concerns with physicians, diabetes educators, dieticians, and other healthcare providers to get help in the day-to-day management of diabetes. Extended family members, teachers, school nurses, counsellors, coaches, day-care providers, and other resources in the community can provide information, support, and guidance regarding skills to cope with the disease. They may also act as resource persons for health education, financial services, social services, mental health counselling, transportation, and home visits.

Depending on their age and level of maturity, children living with diabetes should be encouraged to take care of themselves. Most school-age children can recognize symptoms of hypoglycemia and if they are over 12 years old they may be able to take insulin injections of correct dosage by themselves. They can also be involved in planning their diet chart.

Treatment of diabetes in adolescents is complex and should only be handled by experienced physicians. Also, such patients should be looked after by a team consisting of diabetologist, nutritionist, diabetes educator, and psychologist.

Educating people with diabetes about diet, exercise and drugs is the most important part of the initial management of the disease and should be accomplished in several sessions. Insulin management should be discussed and demonstrated to children and parents, so that they can take insulin injections themselves. Parents, along with their children, should be made aware about healthy eating habits, physical exercise, and dosage management of drugs/ insulin.

Eat Healthy – Less Sugar

The food manufacturers use all kinds of code names to disguise sugar in your food. They know that sugar tastes really good to the human taste buds and they try to add sugar to as many foods as possible because it will keep you coming back for more. Pretty sneaky, huh? But when you see “sugar” in the list of ingredients in the food you are about to eat, this is referring to what we think of as table sugar. It’s that bright white, powdery sugar that you see at an old-fashioned diner or use for baking. This table sugar looks all pretty and pristine white… and you probably have fond memories about the snow-white, sugar-covered candy you ate when you were a kid… But this sugar is a highly processed chemical.

Without getting into too much of the technical detail about how they process it, it’s basically a super-concentrated carbohydrate. They take out the sucrose (the natural sugar) from hundreds of beets (yes, those little red vegetables that if eaten WHOLE and in their NATURAL state are very good for you)… But they strip away all of the fiber and vitamins and minerals… leaving only the sucrose (sugar) in an isolated form that would never be found in nature.

Now this super-high concentration of sucrose may come from a natural food, but when you throw away all the other components of the beet – then it is no longer a natural food. It is a man-made, processed food. And that’s BEFORE they even add the extra chemicals to bleach it out to that bright white color, and the additives and preservatives they add to it to keep it from spoiling for years.

By the time it reaches the “table sugar” form that we all know and recognize, the sugar has gone through LOTS of different chemical processes. Now how do you think your body responds to this table sugar when you eat it? Right. It’s the same as taking a hit off a crack pipe.Nothing but a pure, chemical high. No nutrients. No vitamins. No nourishment. Only a rush of super-concentrated carbohydrates and toxic chemicals hitting your blood system as soon as you eat it.

Sounds delicious doesn’t it? So now are you beginning to see why sugar makes you gain so much weight so quickly? Think about it… They have taken out the sucrose from who-knows how many of beets… and concentrated all that sugar down into a single serving. In order to get that much sugar in your body’s system at once, you would have to eat A LOT of beets. And even if you WERE to sit down and stuff yourself with beets, you would at least be eating the fiber and the antioxidants and the vitamins and minerals – all that good NUTRITION you get from eating whole, natural foods.But when you eat table sugar, you are only getting the hit of sugar hitting your system… with NO NUTRITION along with it.

When this much sugar hits your system, your blood sugar spikes up way too high… so high that your body becomes desperate to bring your blood sugar levels back down again. And it does this by storing fat. You can see that after years of this behavior, your fat cells will get bigger and bigger and bigger. And then when those fat cells are so big they can’t get any bigger, your body creates MORE fat cells. And table sugar is not the worst offender… the mega foods industry has mainly replaced sugar with even MORE powerful super-sugars like high-fructose corn syrup.

These super-sugars have an even higher glycemic impact (triggers even MORE fat storage). And if you’ll notice that they are putting this in EVERYTHING from sodas, to baked goods, to frozen dinners, to bread, sauces… things that you would never even think that there would be sugar in it. It’s a never ending cycle towards obesity.

When you are craving for sweet foods the next time … think again!