There will be more on lifestyle changes later in this article but first, let's take a look at the link between gum disease and diabetes.ĭid you know that a dental care provider may very well be the first to detect diabetes in your child?īad breath, dry mouth, bleeding gums and receding gums are often signs of the disease. 'The whole idea is we need to be intervening in lifestyle so we can be treating the obesity before diabetes occurs.' 'Prevention is ideal, and the study's results should not lead to discounting lifestyle changes as important for managing diabetes,' he said. 'New drugs simply must be developed for children.'īut drugs are not the answer, according to Copeland. 'The disease can cause blindness, kidney failure and neuropathy, among other problems,' said Copeland.

Kenneth Copeland, endocrinologist and director of the pediatric program at the Harold Hamm Diabetes Center in Oklahoma City, said the results of the five year study - that followed almost 700 children with type 2 diabetes between the ages of 10 and 17 - show that type 2 diabetes in children must be treated early and aggressively. In a report in the Tulsa World newspaper, Dr. Robin Goland, endocrinologist and co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at the Columbia University Medical Center, it is a tragedy to see children suffering heart attacks and strokes at 'terribly young ages.'And in a large study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on April 30, 2012, the current medicines of choice - most commonly metaformin under the brand name Avandia - were found to simply don't work in kids. Type 2 diabetes puts children at significant risk for fatal diseases that the elderly usually face.

Dr robin goland