Help! My Child's Just Been Diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes!

Hi, my names Jen and just a few years ago we had the worrying and rather scary experience of having my daughter, Alissa, diagnosed with juvenile (or Type 1) diabetes.

Im proud to say that she is currently at University and living a normal life, she even writes her own diabetes blog.

So how did we survive the trauma of diagnosis, learning to give insulin injections and learning all about diabetes?

Alissa was first diagnosed having been losing weight for some time although we barely noticed as it was a wonderfully hot summer and wed been enjoying time in the sun!

She spent a couple of days in hospital being treated and then came home. I think we were on information overload theres SO much to take in that its hard to know where to start.

The first time I gave Alissa her insulin injection I made a real hash of it and she ended up with a massive bruise but I was keen to at least have a go rather than her take the worry of it.

Looking back on that time we had good support from the diabetic nurse but theres a few things which I wish someone could have told me:-

• Dont feel guilty - its easy to miss the signs of diabetes when youre with your child all day. The most important thing is to get to grips with their treatment regime, insulin injections and regular blood glucose testing.

• Take it one day at a time - dont start to worry about the future. Whats most important is to help your child through this traumatic time, get them settled back into school or college and try to live as normally as possible.

• Read as much information as you can youll soon know more than the average nurse or doctor. Sign up for newsletters and join the national support organisations. I highly recommend the Juvenile Diabetes foundation for help and information, especially about the latest research and developments into the disease.

• Make diet a whole family issue - we chose to change everyones diet as a family, this meant that Alissa didnt feel singled out as odd or different. If Alissa couldnt eat treacle pudding, nobody was going to! Reading cookbooks from the library and recipes from magazines helped me to re-learn our diet without it becoming boring or dull!

My good friend Sally always reminds me that we must be kind to ourselves. Learning that your child has diabetes isnt easy, can take time to adjust to and can be emotionally draining.

Try not to push yourself too hard, take each day as it comes, enjoy your times together as a family and just keep loving your child the same as ever!

about the Author

Jen Carter runs the Diabetia site which offers information on type 1 diabetes, her diabetic daughter also writes for the Diabetia website.

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Weight Machines or Free Weights?

Which is safer - using exercise equipment that stabilizes the weight for you or free weights, such as dumbbells and barbells? Would it surprise you to know that some weight machines can place a lot of stress on the discs of your vertebrae, stress which could injure your low back? Let's take a look.

Oftentimes when people join a healthclub, they are shown the weight machines, which are usually set up in a circuit where you can go from one machine to another. These people are often new to working out and sometimes a little older, as well.

The common thought is that these machines are easier and thus safer, because you don't have to stabilize and balance the weights, like you do with a dumbbell. There are a couple flaws in this thinking, however. First, pushing and pulling a weight while seated can place a lot of pressure on your discs.

Studies done in the 70's looked at different positions and how much pressure was placed on the spine. Sitting resulted in more pressure than standing. The position that resulted in the highest overall stress - sitting while holding weights. This created more pressure than standing and doing different exercises.

Think of how many healthclub exercises place you in a seated position while pushing or pulling a weight. Think of how many exercisers doing this are baby boomers and seniors, thinking that this is safer. How many of these people have probably had some previous back injury which could be irritated or reinjured?!

Makes you think that those free weights aren't so bad after all, doesn't it. This doesn't mean that these people should be attempting to pick up heavy barbells off the floor, but they should be doing more strength training on their feet.

After all, most people who need increased strength to make their activities of daily living easier, should be doing some strength or resistance training in a standing position, as this will have greater carryover to their activities.

One way of doing this, besides using dumbbells, is using weight machines with cables that allow you to push and pull while standing. This makes sure that your "core" - your abs, low back, and hips - can stabilize your spine, obviously very important to prevent back injuries.

These exercises can also be done with resistance bands, which are cheap, portable, and can be used at home, if desired. Doing strength training in this way is also more efficient as you work your midsection at the same time as you work your upper body, unless you enjoy spending more time exercising than you have to.

By the way, which gym exercise puts the most stress on the discs? The leg press. Many people load up as many weight plates as they can to strengthen their legs. But often, the pelvis comes off the support pad while lowering the weight and all that weight is going through your L5-S1 disc, enough stress to create injury at times.

I've heard therapist Paul Chek talk about more than a few bodybuilders who have blown a disc in this manner. Just keep that in mind while lifting weights - build strength without causing injury, but don't create more strength in your legs than you can stabilize with your core.

Brian Morgan is a strength and conditioning specialist and massage therapist. For more information on posture, mobility and flexibility training, go to http://www.brianmorganfitness.com

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Trance Hypnosis and Will Power

Yes, it's true that most professionals who practice hypnosis would have you close your eyes. And it's also true that no one ever does anything against his/her will or anything that would be immoral. Now, that's not to say that some people don't do immoral things as I'm sure you've seen others do immoral acts and they never went to a hypnotist. And yes, some will do outrageous things all on their own without the aid of a hypnotist.

So why close the eyes? The most famous hypnotist of all times, Milton Erickson, rarely had his patients close their eyes. He was the master at wakened hypnosis--giving suggestions without having one close their eyes.

You're probably wondering about trance. When you buy because of the masterful suggestions used by advertising and marketing geniuses, or when the ghetto students are motivated by the educator, or when you purchase as a result of the salesman's presentation, where's the trance?

That's the irony. Trance has no feeling. It happens the moment the analytical questioning conscious mind is bypassed to the subconscious mind resulting in a change of behavior.

Suggestions as used by Mesmer and his tub with iron rods centuries ago wouldn't work today as man has become more sophisticated and analytical. Today's man would ask, "What's this stupid tub and iron rods about anyway?" Yet, depending on the hypnotist's charisma, tubs and iron rods could be made to work. But why go to that extreme? The hypnotist would need a huge room just to house the tub when simply an improved suggestive technique will accomplish the very same thing.

The "art of suggestion" is simply to cause a change in behavior in the subject. Example: suppose there were a hundred people casually walking out the front door of a building over the course of several hours and you wanted to have as many of them as possible look upward to the sky as they exited the building. What would you do? What kind of suggestion would you use? Would you stop each person and tell them that they should look up into the sky because...?

Today's sophisticated man would question your motives and ignore you thinking you might be distracting them to take their wallet. The answer is to position yourself so that as they leave the building they will see you glancing upward. Their curiosity will cause them to accept the visual suggestion and look upward. That's hypnosis! That's trance!

Years ago I commuted to NYC from NJ via a commuter bus. Smoking was not allowed in NJ, but was allowed in NY. Soon after we'd enter the Lincoln Tunnel, one of the smokers would realize that smoking was ok and light up. Within seconds, another would light up, and another, and another--visual suggestion. Sometimes, we'd get all the way through the tunnel before the first smoker would light up. I always hoped that they'd all forget until we reached the Port Authority bus station and were off the bus.

So why do hypnotists generally have their subjects close their eyes? In reality, suggestions given with eyes wide open can be far more effective--that is if they are the right suggestions.

Quite frankly, most subjects expect that hypnosis is done with eyes closed. For many years I conducted group and individual sessions for stop smoking and weight management. Both were a single session. The first portion was done with the participants in the wakened state. By the time we got around to the eye closure portion, my job was done. The eye closure was simply a relaxation that was expected by those taking the program.

Most hypnotists couple relaxation with suggestion because with the experience of deep relaxation unexpected feelings of lightness, denseness, numbness, euphoria, and sometimes feelings of separateness of mind from body are experienced. Being unfamiliar with these feelings of deep relaxation, the subject simply assumes that he/she is in trance (since they feel differently than ever before) and therefore that the suggestions will work. In other words, the critical thinking mind has been bypassed because of a conclusion--actually a false conclusion, but it works for both the subject and the hypnotist.

Will power? The only will power required is to take the first step to making change and that usually is to seek help in the form of cd's or a professional.

One particular advantage of programs on cd's is that nearly a hundred hours goes into the writing, editing, production, reediting and final production resulting in the most effective scripts possible as opposed to depending on a creative spur of the moment suggestion in a live session. Once one has used a cd, then if live sessions are desired, far more progress can be made as the cds have already laid the foundation of suggestion--it's usually a matter of fine-tuning.

The important thing to know is that trance itself has no feeling and that hypnotists in general use deep relaxation to deliver suggestion because it's expected of them.

Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E., NGH certified is a prominent stress management hypnosis consultant for personal change. He makes it easy to use hypnosis to eliminate unhealthy habits such as overeating He is the author behind the best selling stress management cds and discovered the new technique using Wakened Hypnosis to Overcome Anxiety Panic Attack

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