Nutrition Videos

Hi! I'm Stelios Pantazis. I'm a doctor and I specialize in medical nutrition and metabolic disorders. Today, I'm telling you how vitamin D is associated with juvenile diabetes. Every time I've talked about diabetes till now, I've exclusively referred to its common type, which usually occurs in adults and is associated with increased weight, bad dietary choices, lack of exercise, etc. Today, I'd like to talk about the juvenile type, which is also called type 1 diabetes and occurs more often in children. Juvenile diabetes requires many measurements of blood sugar, and treatment with insulin injections. Fortunately, it's not common. Contrary to adult diabetes, juvenile diabetes is not associated with diet and exercise, or with lifestyle in general, because it's an autoimmune disease. Today, I'm referring to only one factor that is associated with the risk of juvenile diabetes. The vitamin-D levels. The association of the occurrence of juvenile diabetes with vitamin D started as an idea when it was found out that in areas with more sunlight, it was more rare. This graph shows that the risk of juvenile diabetes increases when the distance from the equator increases. However, the difference between Cuba, which reports cases of juvenile diabetes more rarely, and Finland is not exhausted in sunlight. At the same time, we know that vitamin D is a factor that protects from autoimmune diseases in general, so some scientists studied if vitamin-D levels were associated with a lower risk of juvenile diabetes. Apparently, this is true, because as you can see in the graph, when vitamin-D levels are low, the risk of juvenile diabetes is up to three times higher. Therefore, you'd better allow children to expose themselves to the sun and have their vitamin D measured, in order to find out if any treatment is required. Finally, I'd like to add that some studies claim that vitamin-D supplements reduce the risk of juvenile diabetes. In fact, all data gathered by now have been analyzed, and it has been shown that vitamin D in dietary supplements in high dosages may significantly reduce the risk of juvenile diabetes up to 29%. These data are very important, but as I always point out, before using dietary supplements for your children, you have to consult your pediatrician. In no case should you give your children dietary supplements without first consulting your doctor. If you thought this was interesting, please give us a thumbs up. Share it with people who you think might find it interesting, and subscribe to our channel in order to get notified when we upload a video. You can also suggest subjects in the comment section. Thank you very much!