Posts Tagged ‘diabetes’

How to Help a Friend Deal With Diabetes (Type 1)

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Finding out that your friend has diabetes can be scary. Diabetes can be a life threatening disease if not treated correctly. If you have a friend with diabetes, you will want to know what you can do to help them and how best to support them.

Steps

1. Learn everything you can about diabetes. The Web sites at the end of this article will give you a good place to start.
2. Ask your friend what you can do to help. Some people are not comfortable with everyone knowing they have diabetes, nor do they want everyone to try to help out.
3. Find out what to look for if your friend is having a low or high blood sugar attack, and what the treatment is. Treatment for low blood sugar and high blood sugar are very different, and if you treat for the wrong one, it could be life threatening. Again ask your friend or their parents.
4. Have your friend or their mother or father show you how to give insulin shots, so you can give one in an emergency.
5. Eat the same foods as your friend when you spend time together. A diabetic diet is very healthy. Your friend will appreciate the support.
6. Ask questions. If there is something you don’t know, that you feel is important, ask.

Tips

• Don’t assume your friend wants your help. Ask before you act to be sure.
• Even if your friend does not want your help, learn what you can about their condition.
• You are not the diabetic police, your friend may make bad choices, but they are their choices to make, avoid telling them what to do.
• Don’t talk about their disease all the time. They get enough of that at home and at the doctor’s office.
• Most important is to be a friend. Health problems are enough to deal with, help you friend live normally by treating them just like anyone else.

Warnings

• Never tell your friend to do anything against what their parents or doctor has told them.
• If you can’t remember how to treat low or high blood sugar, call a nurse, teacher, parent or other adult, or even 911 (or your country/region’s emergency number).

Related wikiHows

• How to Improve Your Health as a Diabetic
• How to Tell if You Have Diabetes
• How to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes

Sources and Citations

• Joslin Diabetes Center
• Center for Disease Control, Diabetes
• Juvenile Diabetes Foundation
• American Diabetes Association

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Help a Friend Deal With Diabetes (Type 1). All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.