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Diabetes (child)

It doesn’t sound as though your son’s experience matches the symptoms of diabetes. While diabetes is becoming increasingly common in children, there are other more typical symptoms that you would have noticed.

It’s possible that he had a reaction of a different sort to the high levels of sugar in his drink and snack.

Blood sugar

Some children have a tendency to what’s known as ‘rebound hypoglycaemia’ and this could be the case for your son.

While it isn’t connected with diabetes, it means that around two or three hours after consuming a high sugar snack, a child’s blood sugar falls to a low level.

Some children can experience what might be called an ‘exaggerated’ response when they eat too much sugar.

Tired and sleepy

Usually when you eat sugar the level of sugar in your blood rises, which in turn triggers the release of insulin. Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas. It helps glucose enter the cells where it is used as fuel by the body.

In children who have rebound hypoglycaemia, too much insulin is produced, which results in blood sugar levels falling to a level lower than it was before eating the sugar.

Less sugar – in other words, less fuel – than normal is available to the body’s muscles. This can leave a child feeling tired and needing to rest or sleep.

How can you help?

There isn’t any specific treatment, but you can help your son by making sure he has plenty of complex carbohydrates in his diet. These are foods like rice, starches and pasta that release their sugars into the bloodstream slowly.

It’s the simple carbohydrates – like sweets – that give a rapid release of glucose, which then causes most of the rebound problem. So it’s best to keep these to a minimum where possible.

Diabetes

Diabetes, which affects around one in 700 children in the UK, also involves high blood sugar levels. But in diabetes the problem is that the body can’t use the sugar effectively.

There are two types of diabetes. Type 1 affects children and young people, and means you depend on insulin injections and diet to control the body’s blood glucose level.

In Type 1 diabetes, the insulin producing cells in the pancreas are destroyed by the body’s immune system, resulting in little or no production of insulin.

When this happens, the level of glucose in the bloodstream rises dramatically. If untreated, diabetes can be fatal.

Signs and symptoms of diabetes

The first signs of diabetes are that your child is excessively thirsty, passes a lot of urine and always seems hungry but is not putting on weight.

If, at any point, your son has any of these symptoms, see your GP. The doctor would be able to carry out a simple urine test to show glucose in the urine. A blood sample can confirm the diagnosis.

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