You might consider providing vitamin C and B supplements, zinc, magnesium, potassium and chromium. Boosting your child’s diet with vitamins and minerals which play a part in insulin production will help to strengthen the system.
Chromium is an essential trace mineral for general health and wellbeing; together with insulin it regulates blood sugar levels and helps to make insulin work more efficiently. The amount of chromium found in the diet differs from country to country, but in general northern European diets are severely deficient. The best natural sources of chromium are cereals, peas and beans, nuts and brewer’s yeast, wholemeal products and shellfish (especially mussels).
The way food is prepared can affect its chromium content. Heating results in a significant loss and frozen foods contain little or no chromium. A diet rich in fibre improves the body’s ability to absorb and use chromium.
Zinc is another essential trace mineral which helps to facilitate metabolic processes and is needed to assist the release of insulin from any remaining beta-cells in the pancreas. Natural sources are liver, fish and eggs.
Selenium is a vital mineral which works together with vitamins A, B, C and E to defend and improve the body’s immune system.
If an older child has poor glycaemic control, try supplementing the diet with magnesium for a trial period. A lack of magnesium in the diet has been shown to play a role in insulin resistance; it is a vital mineral for the performance of all cells, and is generally stored in the muscles and bone mass.
Diet and exercise
Gill Regan, a former Commonwealth Games long jumper and now a professional dietitian on the Nutrition Steering Group of the British Olympic Association, is also Chief Paediatric Dietitian for the Glanhafren NHS Trust in South Wales. She has made a study of the relationship between food, sport and children with diabetes, and she has come up with an eating programme for them along the same lines as a nutrition programme she has devised for top athletes competing at the Olympics.
She has conducted a survey to find out which foods help to maintain blood sugar at a good level two hours after exercise, and are therefore the best hypo preventatives. During the trial she also found that the way the children used available energy depended on their fitness – those who were the fittest appeared to have the best blood sugar levels, while those who had to work hard during exercise sessions used up more energy.
Gill suggests that children benefit from 20g of carbohydrate for every 30 minutes of exercise they do. The carbohydrate programme she devises for athletes is based on the balance between energy required and carbohydrate intake – just as it is in the diet of a child with diabetes.
‘Telling the children they have the same diet as an Olympic athlete really helps to sell them the idea,’ she says.
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