What are the risk factors of type 2 diabetes in children?

Risk factors for type 2 diabetes in children include children:

• with prediabetes (impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and/or impaired fasting glucose (IFG))
• with a family history of diabetes
• who are overweight
• with low HDL cholesterol or high triglycerides, high blood pressure
• of certain racial and ethnic groups (e.g., Non-Hispanic Blacks, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and American Indians and Alaska Natives)

Find out if you are at risk for prediabetes or diabetes at www.diabetes.org/risktest

Risk factors for your child getting type 2 diabetes include:

• Low activity levels
• High BMI
• Family history
• Poor diet
• Carried weight mostly around the middle

Ways to to reduce risk include:

• Improve overall lifestyle habits.
• Slowly increase activity to 60 minutes per day, aerobic and strength.
• Evolve daily food intake to replace simple sugars with complex carbohydrates.

From Good Kids, Bad Habits: The RealAge Guide to Raising Healthy Children by Jennifer Trachtenberg.

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The major risk factors for type 2 diabetes in children include:

• Being overweight.
• Getting little or no physical activity.
• Having a parent, sister or brother with the disease.

Other things that increase risk include:

• Race. African-American, Hispanic, Native American, Asian-American and Pacific Islander children are at greater risk for type 2 diabetes than white American children.
• Being female. Girls are more likely to develop the disease than boys.
• The child's mother having diabetes that developed during pregnancy (gestational diabetes).
• The child being small for gestational age at birth.

Medical conditions that contribute to the risk of complications in adolescence and beyond include:

• High blood pressure.
• High cholesterol and high triglycerides.
• Fatty liver, in which fat is deposited in the liver.
• Sleep apnea, in which breathing stops briefly during sleep.

Teens who have diabetes and smoke have a higher risk of complications from diabetes than do those who do not smoke.