The majority of cases of type 2 diabetes can be prevented by the adoption of a healthier lifestyle, as demonstrated by Walter Willett, MD, PhD, and his colleagues from the Harvard School of Public Health. In their study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, 91 percent of all Type 2 diabetes cases could have been prevented through improvements in lifestyle and diet.  

*Eat the "right" food
*Exercise at least 1 hour daily and limit sedentary activity
*Calm the nervous system & reduce stress with exercise, yoga, meditation, hypnosis, and adequate sleep
*Add helpful supplements to your diet to decrease inflammation and oxidative stress

1. Eat the "Right" Diet

*Eat REAL food (nutrient dense, low-glycemic with lots of phytonutrients)
*Drink plenty of water and have your child chart it daily on his water chart
*Eat well balanced meals and snacks
*Eat at regular intervals throughout the day [breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner]
*Eliminate food intolerances from your child's diet; Be sure to have your child tested
*Eat for your Nutritional Type

Dietary considerations is where the conventional approach to diabetes and sugar imbalances fail.  How we feed our child can heal their diabetes and pre-diabetes.  Children today consume large amounts of highly processed, high-glycemic food far from its natural state, especially processed grains found in cookies, crackers, muffins, breads, etc.  In contrast, your great-grandmother likely fed her children REAL food filled with fiber naturally (fruits, vegetables, sprouted whole grains, nuts, seeds and legumes) and she also likely fermented some foods.  Fermenting food starts the digestion process helping your child better assimilate its nutrients.  Fermented food is also filled with beneficial bacteria which helps replenish the “forgotten organ” also known as the gut flora.  These two steps of adding more fiber (remember to to make sure 80 percent of it is raw) and adding more fermented foods into your child's daily diet will help heal her digestive system (and therefore all her systems, including the hormonal system which includes insulin) with every bite!

To restore proper sugar metabolism, some children may need to eliminate all sugars and grains, even whole, organic and sprouted grains. Why? Because fructose and grains are major contributors to insulin resistance. How? It's easier for the body to metabolize fructose to fat (rather than to glucose) in the liver. Fat accumulating in the liver cells can lead to inflammation, fibrosis and eventually cirrhosis. This condition is called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). NAFLD in turn leads to hepatic insulin resistance and type II diabetes.
 
Children today drink processed sugar in the form of fruit juice, even watered down fruit juice, soda/pop, energy drinks, sports drinks, “vitamin water”, and so on, replacing the ever important just plain water!  Our bodies are roughly two-thirds water, without adequate water we “dry up" and slow down our metabolism.  Make sure your child is drinking approximately half their body weight in water (40 lb child should drink 20 oz water daily).  Infants are the exception to this rule, as they primarily drink their water as breast milk or formula.  Breastfeed if possible.  (Note: if you are pregnant or nursing research shows omega-3 fats and vitamin D can lower your child's risk for type-1 diabetes, be sure yours are adequate!).  When you start solid foods between 6 and 7 months, include a sippy cup of water after every meal.  This gets them in the healthy habit of drinking water.  In addition to adding empty calories, another problem with drinking (and eating) processed sugar is that you are also feeding the non-beneficial bacteria, yeast and parasites in your digestive tract which swings the digestive eco-system in their favor.  They are sitting at your table every time you eat and drink, so remember to “starve” them out with nutrient dense food and filtered water.  A great fermented drink is kombucha tea.  You can make your own or buy it.  It may take some taste bud training, but eventually you and your child will be hooked!

From a holistic perspective, your digestive health is key to your overall health.  Makes sense for a child with constipation, diarrhea and/or recurrent tummy aches, but a bit strange for helping a child with obesity or sugar imbalances.

People know their digestive system is responsible for digesting and absorbing their food, but most don’t realize that this sacred process of “digestion” is how we nourish every cell in our body.  What is more important than the way we “feed” our cells?  Not much.  The cell is where it all happens ~ the functional basic unit of life.  There’s about 100 trillion of them in your body!  Cells divide, grow, breathe, produce energy, and form every organ in your body.  So need we repeat?  Cells are a big something, and what we feed our cells is vital for our overall health, and that stems from how the food we eat is digested and absorbed into the body.  This is why your digestive system is key to your overall health.  In other words, if your digestive system is not functioning optimally the rest of “yourself” is compromised. 

Our digestive system should be armed with healthy gut flora.  These microorganisms together are busy doing a host of “chores” for our body including fermenting food, training our immune system, keeping growth of harmful pathogenic organisms in check, producing vitamins and hormones for our body, and more.  The gut flora have been called the “forgotten organ”.  We never forget our heart beats, our lungs breathe, our brain thinks, but we do forget that our digestive tract has ten times the amount of microorganisms (bacteria, fungi and protozoa) than cells in the entire body and plays a major role in the normal functioning of our body.

2. Exercise

Exercise improves sugar metabolism by improving insulin sensitivity and it also reduces belly fat. Ideally, your child should exercise at least 1 hour daily, where they are breathing "hard", but not hardly breathing! Adding interval training and strength training further improves metabolism, especially helping your child burn calories and energy when they are NOT exercising. 

3. Add Helpful Supplements

In his book Ultrametabolism, Mark Hyman, MD talks about new research that links the most common chronic diseases, including diabetes, to inflammation (part of the body's natural defense system).  To help re-balance your child's blood sugar, add powerful anti-inflammatory supplements such as probiotics, cod liver oil, and a multi-vitamin/mineral with phytonutrients and anti-oxidants. 

Probiotics, the healthy bacteria, reduce overall inflammation (immune activation) by re-balancing gut flora. Not all probiotics are created equal. See why we love HMF ~ Human based Micro-Flora, clinically proven to proliferate in the human digestive tract and reduce gastrointestinal symptoms.

In addition to decreasing inflammation, cod liver oil and bio-available vitamin/minerals reduce oxidative stress and support healthy carbohydrate metabolism.

Research shows vitamin D helps balance blood sugar. Now research also shows pregnant women who optimize their vitamin D levels can decrease their children's risk for type 1 diabetes! Optimizing your child's vitamin D level in the early years has shown the same decrease in risk for type 1 diabetes. Yet another reason why cod liver oil with vitamin D is a must-have supplement for our children!

4. Balance, Detoxify & Drain

Dr. Sue uses homeopathic and herbal remedies to re-balance the hormonal system (including insulin) and help the body drain and detoxify toxins, through a process called Bio-Therapeutic Drainage and Physiological Regulating Medicine.  You can find a practitioner near you trained in these techniques through Seroyal and Guna Biotherapeutics.  

Susan McCreadie, MD is a Holistic Pediatrician and co-founder of nourishMD. She shows parents how to find REAL health for their child, so they can stop treating their child's symptoms and instead find solutions that help their child heal from the inside out.