Avoid this dangerous combination and save your life.
Suddenly one feels that he is losing weight and does not know what to attribute it to. Some people will be happy, but others will feel a strange sensation. Something seems not quite right. What to do? Go to the doctor, of course. One of the possible diagnoses is type 1 diabetes mellitus, which affects many teenagers.
What happens in diabetes is that the pancreas does not produce enough insulin and that causes glucose to rise. To compensate for this problem, the affected person must inject insulin several times a day, measure glucose regularly and eat a healthy diet that must meet certain parameters.
When insulin therapy begins, many type 1 diabetics gain weight. For many teenagers the effects can be uncomfortable, especially because before the diagnosis they lost weight and, suddenly, at the beginning of the treatment , they see how their silhouette changes and they cannot feel good about themselves.
The danger of this side effect is that adolescents with diabetes begin to have eating disorders as a way to compensate for the weight gain caused by the treatment.
Women are more affected by this phenomenon than men and may fall into bulimia. Some people undergo radical diets, others cause vomiting or go on to practice sports to an excessive degree.
There are also those who do what is known as “insulin purge”, which consists of applying lower doses of insulin on purpose to cause weight loss .
What happens in these cases is that patients automatically have low insulin levels and that, in turn, increases the level of blood glucose. It is true, patients lose weight in the short term and have the feeling that they can regulate their figure, but the risk of suffering from diabetes diseases if the indicated treatment is not followed is serious.
It is known that the consequences can range from neurological and nephrological damage to blindness or a lower life expectancy.
Eating disorders affect almost twice as many adolescents with type 1 diabetes as adolescents who do not have this health problem. The disorders can manifest in the form of bulimia, anorexia or insulin purge.
This risk is also seen a lot in overweight women with type 2 diabetes , who may have uncontrolled hunger attacks. This in turn leads to weight gain that leads to insulin being less effective.
It is not always easy to detect eating disorders, especially at puberty. But it is good that parents are attentive. If young people do not want to share meals with the family and, in addition, there are very noticeable variations in glucose values, it is a warning sign.
In these cases, it is recommended that parents inform the doctor, but not do so behind the back of the affected person.
The best help that can be offered to someone suffering from diabetes and eating disorders is a psychotherapy that aims to revalue the patient’s image of himself, both intellectual and physical.