Symptoms of Type 1 Diabetes in Children

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Dr. David Hill and today we're going to be talking about symptoms of type 1 diabetes in children. The first question is when I say type 1 diabetes, what do I mean? Well I'm distinguishing a type of diabetes that used to be about the only kind that affected children, where the pancreas stops making enough insulin for the body to process sugar or glucose from what we call type 2 diabetes where the pancreas is making plenty of insulin but usually do to obesity or overweight, the rest of the body isn't using that insulin and sugar appropriately. Type 1 diabetes remains the more common in children and it can affect children at any age, often with very little warning. Things that you might see early on include excessive thirst, excessive urination, a child who suddenly has to go to the bathroom all the time and is also drinking an awful lot. A child who's going to the bathroom but not drinking more than usual is more likely to have a urinary tract infection or other problem with the bladder or kidneys. A child who suddenly starts to lose weight always concerns us, this certainly can be a sign of diabetes. And while children go through growth spurts and get hungry with great or lesser frequencies as they get older, if your child seems ravenous all the time and just doesn't seem to be gaining any weight at all, you might want to have him or her checked out by a physician. There are some more subtle signs such as yeast infections which in and overweight child where his skin is up against skin is not that uncommon but in a thin child you very rarely see yeast infections. So that might be another reason to have your child evaluated by a doctor. Also if you see thrush in their mouth beyond one year of age, that should be of concern, that's sort of a white film that is also a type of a yeast infection. So looking for signs of type 1 diabetes in children, look for excessive thirst, excessive urination, excessive hunger, sudden onset of weight loss, odd yeast infections and last, just generalized unexplained fatigue. I'm Dr. David Hill."