assessment of diabetes nutrition information for young people suffering Type 1 diabetes as well as their parents

assessment of diabetes nutrition information for young people suffering Type 1 diabetes as well as their parents

The objective of the study was to prepare and conduct an assessment of diabetes nutrition information for young people suffering Type 1 diabetes as well as their parents and to evaluate the survey’s psychometric characteristics. To achieve this, a team of paediatricians developed the Nutrition Knowledge Survey (NKS) and issued it to 282 youths suffering Type 1 diabetes.  The higher the nutrition scores the teens had, the more their knowledge of nutrition, scored on a range of 0 – 100%.

The study took into account the various aspects of diabetes management including the realities of insulin therapy, blood sugar observation, medical nutrition therapy, and exercise. Knowledge of nutritional requirements and diabetes control is vital because it improves observance and consequently glycaemic regulation to enhance health (Hood et al., 2009).

IN MY TRUST, this is important since few measures exist to determine the knowledge of dietary measures for youth suffering Type 1 diabetes except the common carbohydrate control programs that target the general population due to the impact of excessive blood sugar levels. Nevertheless, the American Diabetes Association proposes a healthy regimen for these youths, necessitating a credible nutritional measure for patients or families undergoing the diabetes problem. Eligible participants for the study included youths in the 8 to 18 years age group taking a daily insulin dosage of at least 0.5 units per kilogram of weight and without any gastrointestinal problems that would affect food consumption. The youths were recruited at a Boston, Massachusetts diabetes centre with parental consent and the families got $40 for taking part in the study.

The results indicated that the parents had a higher nutritional knowledge than youth at 56.9% vs. 73.4% for parents stating acceptable and consistent results. The conclusion would be that the NKS is a credible indicator for gauging general nutrition knowledge and that about Type 1 diabetes among young people and parents.

The researchers completed tests and scores independently for the youths and their parents on the same day of the visit through a questionnaire that took less than an hour to complete with scores counted by correct answers given out of 39 questions. A total of 282 youths and their parents partook of the survey, and this yielded several results. The average duration of Type 1 diabetes suffering was in the 6.4 ± 3.4 years range, and the average A1C range was computed to be 8.6 percent  ± 1.4 percent with the number of youths requiring insulin pump therapy standing at 66 percent.

The youths’ NKS scores showed a minor connection with a period of diabetes presence, and the parents of those requiring insulin pumps tended to score higher in the NKS measures than the parents of those who relied on daily insulin injections, i.e., 75 parents. Youths who relied on insulin pumps also had higher NKS scores than their injection therapy counterparts and parents with a college education or better also had higher NKS scores than those without the college education.

In conclusion, despite new and modern methods of Type 1 diabetes regulation involving rigorous insulin administration, dietary control is the most important strategy to use in diabetes medication (Smart, 2009).

Thus the NKS is a simple method to gauge diabetes and nutrition knowledge among young people suffering type 1 diabetes and their parents. The findings indicate the credibility of the approach, implying its usefulness in clinical and study settings and future studies should seek the correlation of the measure to nutrition counselling once patients start receiving help.

References

Hood KK, Peterson CM, Rohan JM, Drotar D. (2009) Association between adherence and glycemic control in pediatric type 1 diabetes: a meta-analysis. Pediatrics.

Smart C, Aslander-van Vliet E, Waldron S. (2009) Nutritional management in children and          adolescents with diabetes. Pediatr Diabetes