“How to Increase Diabetes Awareness among Adolescents in 2023”

Adolescence is a period of transition from children to adults. In the process there are several changes such as physical to emotional changes. Today, teenagers are the target market for entrepreneurs, one of which is a food and beverage product entrepreneur. If you take it back about two to three years ago, several contemporary food and beverage trends continue to develop. As mentioned in the previous sentence, the target of this current food and beverage trend is none other than teenagers with an age range of 13-18 years. Coupled with the existence of cultural trends beautiful coffee and hang out in adolescents, accelerating the development of contemporary food and drinks among adolescents.

If you observe the current food and beverage products currently in circulation, most of them have high levels of sugar and calories. It is very unfortunate, that today’s youth are not aware of this, consuming contemporary food and drinks has mushroomed like a lifestyle for teenagers. Lifestyle patterns such as consuming drinks and foods that are high in sugar and calories continuously push adolescents to the brink of disease, one of which is diabetes. So if teenagers don’t balance it with a healthy lifestyle such as consuming vegetables and fruit and exercising at least once a week, it will have a negative impact on their body’s health.

Diabetes that attacks teenagers today is generally type 2 diabetes mellitus. Type 2 diabetes mellitus is caused by an unhealthy lifestyle, so it is different from type 1 diabetes mellitus which is caused by an autoimmune disease. The increase in the number of diabetes in adolescents is a concern, especially since knowledge and education about diabetes in adolescents has not been carried out properly. The lack of education about diabetes in adolescents makes adolescents not aware of this non-communicable disease.

Although not physically visible, diabetes actually has quite a dangerous impact. If left unchecked, diabetes can cause other diseases such as kidney disease, heart disease, stroke, and even disease complications. This shows how dangerous diabetes is if it is not treated immediately. Thus, adolescent awareness of diabetes needs to be increased in order to avoid the adverse effects of diabetes. The idea that diabetes only occurs in old age should be changed, diabetes can attack all ages so that not only the elderly can suffer from this disease. The causes of diabetes in adolescents are generally due to obesity, continuous consumption of high-sugar foods and drinks, unhealthy lifestyles, and genetics.

How can you make teenagers more aware of diabetes?

There are various variations in increasing awareness of diabetes, one of which can be through social media content. Adolescents spend almost half of their time scrolling through social media, so social media content can be a medium that helps adolescents be aware of diabetes. Content topics such as healthy diet routines and at-home exercise can also be examples of media that can provoke a sense of adopting a healthy lifestyle in adolescents, so that with healthy living thoughts can prevent adolescents from developing diabetes.

Besides that, direct education accompanied by blood sugar checks can also be applied to schools or educational institutions. By checking regularly at least once a month, it can help students maintain their blood sugar levels. Another thing that can be an alternative is to change healthy food products into something that appeals to teenagers. Some of the health food or beverage product managers are now starting to innovate with their food products, such as nicely packaged juices and cakes that are gluten free and added sweeteners.

With this, it is hoped that adolescents will pay more attention to what they consume and better organize their lifestyle so they can live a healthy and active life according to their age. Teenagers should have awareness of the impact of diabetes on their bodies, by improving lifestyles such as eating lots of fruits and vegetables and exercising.