NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Young people with type 2 diabetes struggle to maintain healthy eating habits and to get enough exercise, with non-white teens appearing to have a particularly tough time, according to what the researchers call the most comprehensive study to date of self-care among adolescents with the disease.

"The concern is that while they're reporting some good self-management behaviours, they're also reporting a lot of not-so-good self-management behaviours and a lot of stress and other barriers to really performing good self management," Dr. Russell L. Rothman of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.

Rothman and his colleagues surveyed 103 individuals 12 to 21 years old with type 2 diabetes. More than 80 percent said they took their recommended medications at least 75 percent of the time, 59 percent reported checking their blood glucose more than twice a day, and over 70 percent exercised twice or more every week.

But 76 percent said they overate at least weekly, nearly half ate fast food four times or more a month, and 20 percent drank at least one soda or sugary drink every day. Many said they ate unhealthily because they were stressed, bored or sad. And 68 percent watched two or more hours of TV every day.

The researchers also found that non-white kids had worse blood glucose control and were more likely to have been hospitalised than whites.

"Clearly there's a lot of emotional impact on these children of having to take care of their diabetes every day," Rothman said in an interview. Coping with these emotions may make it harder for them to stick with healthy habits, he added, which is particularly worrying because people who develop type 2 diabetes in adolescence run the risk of having serious complications like eye disease, kidney disease, and heart disease as early as their 20s if the disease isn't well controlled.

Rothman and his team are now investigating interventions like social networking and motivational communications with families to help adolescents with type 2 diabetes adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles.