Prediabetes is the last thing you want for your child. If you’ve recently got a diagnosis, you’re probably worried. Fortunately, there are plenty of things you can do to prevent it. It’s much better to start working on it now. Here are a few ways you can help reverse prediabetes in children.
Cut Out Grains From Your Diet
Grains are one of the most common foods in the modern diet. That’s not a good thing, though. Most of the time, grains trigger a pretty big insulin response. That’s the culprit behind prediabetes. When you’ve had too much insulin, your body develops a tolerance. Eventually, it won’t respond to naturally-produced insulin at all. Cutting grains out of your diet could help. Your child wouldn’t experience so many large insulin spikes. So, they’d begin to reset their tolerance to the hormone.
Get a Continuous Glucose Monitoring System
Another thing you can do is start monitoring their glucose levels with continuous glucose monitoring system (CGM). Usually, you don’t think about monitoring glucose unless you’re diabetic. But, you can use the same technology on anyone. Monitoring your child’s glucose levels would let you know what’s going on. If they start getting too high, you could skip a meal. When they’re too low, you can eat a small snack.
To combat diabetes, you’ll want your levels to be as stable as possible. Maintaining stable glucose levels can help to reset your insulin tolerance as well. Certain foods tend to trigger large glucose spikes. Keep an eye on your child’s levels after each meal. By doing that, you’ll be able to determine which foods are their biggest triggers.
Eliminate Sweets
Don’t give your children sweets or candy if you can help it. That’s just going to exacerbate their symptoms. Usually, we develop prediabetes because we’ve been eating too many of them. Eating such a concentrated sugar triggers a massive insulin response. If we’re eating like that all the time, we’ll definitely develop insulin resistance.
Limit sweets as much as possible whenever you are caring for a prediabetic child. Click To TweetYou’ve got to limit sweets as much as possible whenever you’re caring for a prediabetic. You could try replacing sweets with something fatty. It could help to satisfy cravings without triggering such a strong insulin response. Try implementing this into their daily lifestyle to help reverse prediabetes in children.
Consider a Ketogenic Diet
Ketogenic meals could be your ticket to a healthier insulin response. Normally, our bodies use glucose as their primary fuel source. But, when we’re prediabetic, our body doesn’t process glucose as well. This can lead to a ton of different symptoms.
Thankfully, our body has another source of fuel it can use. Ketone bodies are released whenever the body metabolizes fat. We release them whenever we deplete out glucose, naturally. It’s not the body’s primary fuel system, but it works just as well.
Eating a ketogenic diet puts you into ketosis. That’s when your body begins burning ketone bodies for energy. By putting yourself into this state, you won’t burn any glucose. Giving your body a break from glucose could help heal your insulin receptors. Ketogenic diets have been popular for their ability to control seizures, too. They’ve been used to treat epileptics.
Avoiding carbs is the biggest rule in the ketogenic diet program. You’re supposed to get the majority of your calories from fats and proteins. You can get fats from animal and plant sources. Both of them have their own benefits.
Drink a Lot More Water
Water is vital to our body. Without enough of it, nothing works well. Simply drinking more water can improve your health without doing anything else. When you’re combatting prediabetes, it’s incredibly powerful. One of the biggest hurdles is learning to overcome your hunger cravings.
Drinking a glass of water can help to curb your appetite. So, you won’t feel tempted to eat something you shouldn’t. It’ll also help your cellular processes run more efficiently. That can have a huge impact on your health as well.
Reversing Prediabetes in Children
Learning you’ve got a prediabetic child can be worrisome. But, you’ve got the tools to do something about it. Changing how your child eats is going to be your first line of defense. By improving their diet, you’ll be improving their health. Beyond that, you’ll want to start monitoring their glucose levels. That will let you know when something is wrong. Hopefully this article gives you insight to reverse prediabetes in children.
