Type 1 diabetes, sometimes called children’s diabetes, is a condition that causes the body to stop producing insulin (unlike type 2, which causes reduced production or resistance to insulin). Insulin is the hormone that the body uses to take glucose from the blood and to the cells, where it can be used as energy.

We don’t really know what causes diabetes, but we do know that with proper management, most people can live long, healthy lives with diabetes. So what should you know if your child is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes?

First, don’t panic about the kind of life your child will have. Although there will need to be some lifestyle changes, people with diabetes can eat normal food - even sweets. As long as it’s part of a healthy meal plan and a lifestyle that includes exercise, your child shouldn’t have to give up any of his or her favorite foods completely. Besides, don’t we all eat too many sweets anyway? Your child just has a bigger reason to cut back.

It’s important to talk to your doctor about whether or not your child should use insulin. Many people have the wrong idea about insulin, believing that it’s unhealthy because it causes weight gain. Although insulin can increase the risk of weight gain, glucose management is an important part of a healthy lifestyle with diabetes. As long as using insulin is part of a healthy diet, risk should be minimal compared to the benefits.

It’s important to try to stay healthy, as sicknesses can cause glucose levels to become very high. If your child gets sick, you will want to have a plan of action in place already to avoid serious complications. You’ll want to talk to a diabetes educator about what your plan of action should be if your child’s illness becomes more than just a little sniffle. Make sure your child gets flu shots and pneumonia shots, as people with diabetes have a greater risk of dying from complications of these illnesses than people without it.

It’s normal for you or your child to feel angry or depressed. The important thing is to make sure that doesn’t turn into a liability in managing your diabetes. Instead, work to turn the anger into a tool that helps you to fight against diabetes, not against treatment, and work with your doctor to make sure that depression doesn’t become too much of a problem. Get professional help to deal with it if you need to.

It’s important to be ready for emergencies, now more than ever - and not just diabetic emergencies. Never be without at least three days worth of supplies just in case there’s some reason that you can’t get more supplies quickly.

The most important thing to remember is that people with diabetes can lead very normal lives as long as they allow for a little more planning than people without it.

Unlike many diseases, diabetes doesn’t seem to be an inherited trait like albinism or hemophilia. In fact, experts aren’t completely sure what causes it. However, it’s clear that some people actually are more likely to get diabetes than other people, and that genetics predispositions do exist. How do you know how likely it is for a person to get diabetes?

First, not everyone with a genetic predisposition for diabetes gets it. Identical twins with exactly the same genes don’t automatically both get diabetes. There has to be some kind of environmental trigger, and since everyone is different (even identical twins in the same house) not everyone will actually manifest their diabetic tendencies. Unfortunately, researchers aren’t sure what things are triggers and what are coincidences yet. A few of the factors they think may trigger type 1 diabetes are:

• Cold weather - diabetes seems to surface more often during colder months
• Diet - babies who were breastfed and waited longer for solid foods seem to be less likely to develop diabetes
• Viruses - some viruses could trigger diabetes in some people when it causes other people little trouble.

For type 2, there’s a different set of possible triggers:

Obesity

Westernized eating - too much fat, not enough carbohydrates, not enough exercise

Most of these ideas are still very shaky, but researchers are working to find answers. The patterns that they find are confusing, because predispositions for the disease will come up with one result in one place and another somewhere else. A person in Africa with the same predisposition as someone in the United States will almost never actually get the disease.

Type 2 diabetes does run in families, so the chances of your children getting diabetes if you had it are good, especially if you were diagnosed after the age of 50. Researchers are getting better at predicting who gets diabetes, and eventually may be able to figure out who will get it much more effectively than they do now.

In the meantime, the best thing to do is to eat healthy foods and exercise regularly. Even if you do develop diabetes under these circumstances, you’ll already be on your way to a great way to manage your diabetes.

Being the family healer is a big responsibility. I have to come up with effective and lasting solutions for people’s health problems. Diabetes type 2 is something easily overcome with the correct mindset, the correct attitude, correct lifestyle change; and this is precisely the problem with diabetics, they have this closed mindset that they will be forever taking an escalating amount of drugs, continue eating the standard american diet and commercialized lifestyle, progressively get sicker as they age... simply because they have been branded as a diabetic and expect to be diabetic all their life.

Death to Diabetes opens the diabetic mind and takes you full circle, author DeWayne McCulley covers just about every topic you will need to know about regarding your diabetes journey and recovery. His advice is sound, and his super meals are key to getting your diabetes under control.

Author DeWayne McCulley is an ex-diabetic engineer who survived a near death, diabetic coma with a blood glucose level of 1,337 — more than a thousand points above normal. Despite two blood clots, pneumonia, high cholesterol, and four insulin shots a day, DeWayne was able to use his engineering and biochemistry background to methodically wean himself off the insulin, and other drugs. He lowered his average glucose level to less than 95 and his hemoglobin AIC below 5%, while losing 50 pounds and reversing his diabetes within 4 months. He credits his recovery to God, his doctors and nurses, his mother, his daughter, a set of accidents (blessings), and his underlying thirst for knowledge. With a lot of encouragement from his daughter, his mother, and people from work, the local churches, the wellness industry, and the two diabetic support groups he was facilitating, DeWayne decided to write this book that explains his experience, the real root casues of diabetes, and how to beat this disease and its complications. His hope is that this book will inspire you the way he was inspired — by people he never would have met if it weren’t for his experience with diabetes.

In some countries the word “cure” is illegal to use, DeWayne resorts to the title “Death to Diabetes” and talks about diabetes “wellness” and “reversal”. This book is a large of component of the cure for most Type 2 diabetes cases.

I like the charts, I like the methodologies, this is an absolute beginner’s book to cures. Written for the usual joe who has never ever been exposed to cures. The diets are transitional, people are used to these kinds of complicated ways of eating and DeWayne teaches them how to do it right. The book can be used as a general wellness guide for any health problem that can be addressed via diet and some detoxes.

Diabetics will love the chapters on how to wean yourself away from drugs until you totally get rid of all drugs. No drugs, for the rest of your life.

This book is empowering, very thorough and well-written. This book is the one every diabetic should read.