Impact of Milk as a Bedtime Snack on Nocturnal Glycemia in Preschool Children with Type 1 Diabetes: Case Series

Abstract

Young children with type 1 diabetes (T1D) present special challenges for intensive diabetes management and glycemic variability. Young children face many difficulties in diabetes management, such as having more frequent hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia, lack of awareness of hypoglycemia, less residual beta cell function, severe hypoglycemia and long-term neurocognitive effects due to chronic hyperglycemia. Many parents routinely give bedtime snacks, regardless of glucose value, because of the fear of nocturnal hypoglycemia. Having a habit of drinking milk before sleeping at night is an attitude peculiar to our country. In our clinic, it was observed by examining Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) data that drinking milk at night snacks caused hyperglycemia during the night in young children who were followed-up in our clinic. In case of not drinking milk, it was observed that the course of glucose at night was in the target range (70-180 mg/dL). In this article, the effects of medical and medical nutrition therapy and milk consumption as bedtime snack on CGM data of two patients aged 3-5 years with follow-up in our department is presented.