Learning About and Living with Diabetes
Diabetes is diagnosed in Americans with increasing frequency. It is a condition requiring careful management and awareness by both the patient and his family. Fortunately, the Internet has made this task easier. Whether you're researching adult or juvenile diabetes, or if you seek help for yourself or for a loved one, the Web offers many resources for understanding diabetes and its treatments.
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Kids and teens can be stubborn when it comes to taking the advice of parents. Directing your kids to trusted Web sites that cater their tone and content to a younger audience can help make children and teens feel empowered to take responsibility for their own healthcare. This section provides you with some of those sites.
- When looking for child-friendly information on the Web, check for age appropriateness. A teen will likely not pay attention to a site aimed toward younger children and a younger child may not understand a site aimed toward teens.
- Kids don't like to be different, especially when they're teens. By finding kid-friendly Web sites, they can find other children or teens their age who can understand what they are experiencing.
- A large part of dealing with diabetes is eating right. Since eating is such a social aspect of our lives, particularly with teens, it's important that they learn how to eat well. In the "Eating Well with Diabetes" section below, you can find several links to diabetic recipes and how to eat well within a diabetic diet.
For children and diabetes ...
KidsHealth
has a "Diabetes Center" especially for kids that thoroughly explains diabetes in child-friendly language. The diabetes "movie" uses simple graphics to illustrate how insulin works and what happens in type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
The Eagle's Nest
is an educational program for children with diabetes sponsored by several government agencies, including the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. The site is full of links for child-friendly information and activities for children to learn about diabetes. Free
coloring books are also available for download.
Think Like a Pancreas
is an interactive Flash animation catering to adolescents. A talking pancreas with a French accent serves as your tour guide as you explore blood sugar levels, lifestyle issues, and troubleshooting suggestions.
For living with diabetes ...
The American Diabetes Association
has a section for both parents and children. This section provides information on diabetes care, living with diabetes, information on diabetes and the law, and more. There are teen and youth sections where kids can go to learn about diabetes in age-friendly language, and an area on "
Special Occasions" that offers tips on how to cope with these usually sugar-filled events.
The National Diabetes Education Program
is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This section of the site answers some questions that parents may have about their children with diabetes, such as meeting treatment goals and how this affects the rest of the family.
The Canadian Diabetes Association
provides this PDF document entitled "Kids With Diabetes in Your Care" for anyone who works with children: daycare workers, teachers, coaches, and even the parents and family members of the children. It's a resource kit for anyone who wants to know about diabetes and includes a quiz for you to test your own knowledge.
For online support ...
Diabetes Teen Talk
is a site that offers "friendship, education and inspiration" to teens with diabetes. There is a message board where teens can talk to other teens, a "
Life" section where they can read about other teens with diabetes, and an "
Interviews" section that features chats with diabetes experts and celebrities who have diabetes.
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