What is diabetes?

Diabetes mellitus is usually just called diabetes. Diabetes is caused by having too much sugar (glucose) in your blood. Glucose enters your bloodstream through the intake of food. The food that you eat contains carbohydrates which is converted into glucose. Blood will transport glucose to all cells in your body. You need glucose for energy, just as a car requires fuel (energy) to drive. If you have diabetes, the cells into which glucose should enter, are ‘locked’. You need a ‘key’ to unlock the cells. The ‘key’ is called insulin. Insulin is a substance that your body makes and ensures that glucose can be absorbed by the body’s cells. If you have diabetes, your pancreas cannot make insulin. Therefore, the cells will not open and glucose can not enter.

Youtube. What is diabetes?

Medical: Which types of diabetes exist?

Although Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are not the only types, they are the most common types of diabetes found in children. Read more

Medical: What can you do about it?

The best way to prevent complication later in life is to take good care of yourself every day. That means making sure you regularly check your blood glucose levels, eat a well-balanced diet and ensure you have as few hypers and hypos as possible. If you have diabetes, or you know someone with diabetes, you will know how hard this can be! Read more

Theme: Diabetes and Sport

Of course, you don’t have to run for a marathon but a little bit of sport and exercise always helps. Read more

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The website Cyberpoli Kids is now live!
The Cyberpoli (www.cyberpoli.nl) is an information platform and meeting place for children and adolescents with a disability and/or chronic disorder. Common disorders such as asthma, diabetes or Celiac disease but also less common ones such as hemophilia, DSD or craniopharyngioma. At the Cyberpoli, these children and adolescents can obtain relevant information about their disorder, look each other up and ask questions to a panel of medical practitioners and experiential experts anonymously.

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Frequently asked question: What should you do when you are having a hyper?

If your blood sugar level is too high, you need extra insulin. Short-acting insulin can quickly lower your blood sugar at such a moment.

Long-acting insulin works too slowly at such a time. You should have learned from your doctor or nurse from your diabetes team how much additional insulin you need to inject.

It is important to check your urine for ketones if your blood glucose level is 15 mmol / l or higher. Contact your doctor or diabetes nurse if there are ketones in your urine or if you are nauseous, have to vomit or have other symptoms.

Frequently asked question: What should you do when you have a hypo?

If your blood sugar level is too low, that is dangerous. You can eventually lose consciousness. Therefore, it is important to prevent a hypo, but if it does happen you must know what to do.

With a hypo, you must eat and drink something. It is important to choose food where the sugars are quickly available and therefore quickly enter your bloodstreams, such as Dextrose tables or a sugary drink like lemonade. When you do not have that at hand, you can also eat cookies, a sandwich or a banana and drink fruit juice, but it takes a little longer before these sugars are released into your blood.

Sometimes you can’t eat anything, for example, because you are very sick and must vomit or because you are too drowsy or unconscious. Then you must be treated in a different way, namely with glucagon (brand name GlucaGen®).

Glucagon is a hormone that is created by the body itself and ensures an increase in blood sugar. Using GlucaGen, the stored glycogen in your liver is converted into glucose, which ends up in your bloodstream. If you inject the right amount of glucagon with a hypo, your blood sugar rises within five to twenty minutes.