When you are on a cell phone call you want to stay connected but sometimes you lose your connection.  In a way, the cell phone is like something that can happen in the body between your cells and insulin.  Making a connection and keeping a connection between your cells and insulin is essential to the process of glucose absorption.  A break in that connection is called insulin resistance or impaired insulin sensitivity.

What is insulin resistance?

When your body’s cells don’t respond to insulin, the condition is called insulin resistance.  To understand insulin resistance you have to look at a person whose pancreas and other body cells are connected or functioning properly.   As that person eats, their blood glucose rises and causes their pancreas to produce insulin.  Insulin passes through the bloodstream persuading fat and muscle cells to take up blood glucose.  It also tells the liver to hold onto its glucose stores.

The fat and muscle cells in a person with insulin resistance don’t respond to the presence of insulin and this lack of response leaves glucose in the blood stream.

Human growth hormone, blood sugar readings and insulin resistance

Going back to the cell phone analogy, imagine you lose the connection, you keep driving, you get back into range and get reconnected.  That’s what happens when your child has a growth spurt.

You may have noticed that there are times when your child has a series of high blood sugar readings.  Then later they return to normal.  As your child goes through growth spurts, larger amounts of human growth hormone are present in the body.  Human growth hormone causes insulin resistance in your child.  When the period of intense growth slows, the connection returns and the child’s insulin resistance disappears.  This type of insulin resistance is normal in growing children.

When insulin resistance is a problem with juvenile diabetes

For someone with type 1 diabetes, long term extremes in glucose highs and lows can increase the likelihood of developing insulin resistance.  Years of poor control and imbalance in food intake, insulin intake and exercise greatly increase the risk of insulin resistance.

Balance is the Key with Type 1 diabetes

Your job is to teach your child balance.  Encourage your child to exercise 30 minutes –moderate exercise like walking or biking:  three or four times a week will suffice, although more is OK.  Teaching proper eating habits like balancing carbs with protein intake to reduce glucose highs and lows is the other part of the key to balancing glucose levels.  Reviewing blood glucose readings and insulin doses to determine patterns is also part of what you should do and what you should train your child to do as they mature.

Finally, you have heard this before, but it bears repeating.  Cut yourself some slack!  It’s not easy being a surrogate pancreas.