Dramatic increase in Type II diabetes seen

Friday, June 1, 2001 | 11:08 a.m.

Local medical experts and health officials nationwide are alarmed by the rising numbers of children -- some as young as 10 years old -- being diagnosed with adult-onset diabetes.

A trend of fatter children, less active than previous generations and consuming more fast food, is behind the rise in the disease more commonly found in overweight, middle-aged adults.

"Because of the lifestyle of today's children, this is becoming a serious problem," said Pat Klepzig, executive director for the American Diabetes Association's Nevada Chapter.

"We have to take the junk food and video games away from them and start encouraging healthy diets and exercise. Too many children are living on a diet of fast-food hamburgers, fries and a Coke, and do not even know what a healthy, home-cooked meal tastes like."

University Medical Center pediatrician Dr. William Holm, a former pediatric endocrinologist, said he and his colleagues are seeing a noticeable increase in children with adult-onset diabetes, and they note that extensive research has shown a correlation between weight and diabetes.

"Children, especially teenagers, live in a world where they feel indestructible," Holm said, noting that the encouragement of dieting and exercise often can fall on deaf ears.

"Many times the child's diet depends on what their parents do, and, in a number of cases, the parents also are overweight and are not providing a healthy diet" for their children.

Diabetes is not new among children. About 10 percent of the 15.6 million Americans with diabetes have Type I, or juvenile diabetes -- an auto-immune disease that destroys the body's ability to produce insulin, the hormone that helps break down sugars and utilize nutrients.

The rest have Type II, or adult-onset, diabetes, a condition where fat cells prevent the body from producing enough insulin or using it efficiently. It is characterized by fatigue and the need to consume a large volume of water.

Both are incurable.

So new is the diagnosis of adult-onset diabetes in children that reliable statistical data and medical studies on the subject are difficult to find or do not exist.

The American Diabetes Association Nevada Chapter, the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation of Las Vegas and the Desert Springs Hospital Diabetes Treatment Center say they do not track the number of local children with diabetes.

UMC also offered no hard numbers to support its assertion that there is a rise in Type II diabetes among children, but rather based its conclusions on what its doctors have seen in the daily treatment of young patients and how their diagnoses relate to a national trend.

In February the American Diabetes Association released new guidelines "to address the alarming rise of Type II diabetes in children and adolescents," calling it "an emerging epidemic." The organization, however, offered no statistics on how many U.S. children have either Type I or Type II diabetes.

The National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases, which serves as the national diabetes information clearinghouse, says that 0.16 of the nation's population under age 20 -- 123,000 people -- have Type II diabetes. That number may not seem high, but the statistic did not need to be kept until recently.

Klepzig said it is encouraging that doctors now are testing children for adult-onset diabetes. In the past, she said, doctors didn't even look for it, because children generally didn't get that form of diabetes.

While diabetes can lead to a diabetic coma, heart attack, blindness, limb amputations, severe kidney disease and even early death, it is preventable and controllable, Klepzig said.

Holm said he tries hard, when he tells parents that a child has adult-onset diabetes, to get across the message that he is not handing out a death sentence.

"Usually my first job is to undo the damage that is done by well-meaning neighbors and friends who tell the children or their parents how their grandfather died a horrible death from diabetes," Holm said.

"Today we know so much more to help people control their diabetes and live a normal lifespan with the disease."

The first line of defense is in prevention, Klepzig said.

"We have a program in our schools where children get pledges to raise money to fight diabetes by walking around the gym," Klepzig said. "Walking and swimming are considered the best exercise to help prevent diabetes. So not only does it help us financially, it also is a healthy program for the kids."

Still, Klepzig admits, just 10 of the Clark County School District's 250 schools have signed on with the program.

Besides such school-based programs, her organization depends on fund-raisers to help make the public more aware of the dangers of diabetes. The Napoleon McCallum Celebrity Golf Tournament on Monday at the Anthem course will benefit the society.

"We are optimistic that we can get our message across, because years ago heart disease was on the rise, but people were encouraged to lose weight, and those numbers went down," Klepzig said. "We also could meet our challenge."

To prevent the disease, health officials recommend that children's diets consist of lunches and dinners of moderate protein, high fiber and low fat. They say that takeout foods like pizza and chicken are allowable once in a while, because if a plan is too restrictive, it won't succeed either with children or adults.

High-fat and high-sugar snacks like cookies, potato chips, candy bars and high-calorie sodas should be substituted with apples, cheese, crackers and bottled water, though an occasional sweet is OK, health officials say.

Families should engage in more exercise, officials said, recommending that a trip to the mall is great for getting in a long walk to help the body's cells process sugars.

Health officials say the more fun you can make exercise, the better chance it has to succeed at significantly reducing weight and the risk of diabetes.