Diabetes can seem to be an overwhelming disease because it impacts so many areas of your daily life. It’s important to have support from family, friends and from other people with diabetes.You don’t have to face diabetes alone.
Join a support group like this website to connect with people who truly understand, motivate, and encourage you.Learn from others who have had success with managing their diabetes.
Living with diabetes can be a challenge. You are a key player on your health care team when it comes to managing your diabetes. Whether you have just been told that you have diabetes or you’ve had the disease for years, you can develop self-management skills.
Tools For Managing Your Diabetes
Food, physical activity, stress management, medicine and monitoring blood glucose are tools that can help manage your diabetes.
Food
Your body needs food to make glucose that is used for energy. Eating the right foods during the day will help to keep your blood glucose in control.
Remember that food makes blood glucose go up, so controlling how much, what kind and when you eat can make a difference. Here are some tips:
Eat three well-balanced meals a day.
If meals are more than 4 to 5 hours apart, eat a small healthy snack.
Eat a bedtime snack so that your body has enough energy while you sleep.
Do not skip meals or snacks. Your body will make up for the lack of glucose by asking the liver to produce extra glucose. This can make controlling your blood glucose even harder.
Ask for help if you have questions or need advice about your food choices.
For more great Health and Nutrition Tips refer to the website positivehealthwellness.com.
Physical Activity
Our Saint Weiler Hachi loves to go for a spin in the car and a walk on the Greenway in Waterford!
Both myself and my husband Brendan enjoy taking Hachi for a walk as the fresh air and exercise is good for the heart and there is plenty to see and do on the Greenway!
On the Greenway people are allowed to cycle, walk and run and you can bring your dog, as long as he/she is on a lead.
On the route there is some beautiful scenery for everyone to enjoy!
Is there any nice walkways near you?
Exercise is important for everyone. When you have diabetes, it helps to use up blood glucose. Physical activity also makes your insulin work better.
Check with your health care provider before starting an exercise program.
Start slowly to avoid injury.
Choose activities that you will enjoy.
Get physical activity every day.
Stress Management
Stress increases blood glucose and can cause problems with your blood glucose control.
Think about what causes stress for you.
Find healthy ways that help you cope with stress. Try them.
Seek help if you need it.
Medicine
There are many medicines that help control blood glucose. Your health care provider will choose the best medicines for you if you need them. It is not unusual for your medicine needs to change.
Monitoring Blood Glucose
Regular testing will tell you how your food, physical activity and medicines are working. You can use a diabetes management plan for following your blood glucose testing schedule as well as for recording your medicine, food and exercise recommendations.
Positive Self-Care Behaviors That Can Help Control Your Diabetes
How to control your diabetes: Learn inner truths about diabetes
1. Healthy Eating
This means having foods that provide all three nutrients: protein, carbohydrate and fat in reasonable quantities to help you maintain a healthy weight.
It means eating regular meals that are low in saturated fat and excess sodium and controlling the amount and type of carbohydrate you eat at one time. What it doesn’t mean is that you have to give up all of your favorite foods or that certain foods are taboo.
In order to do this you need to know the nutrient (especially carbohydrate) content of foods, how to read labels, how to cook foods to maintain nutrient content and avoid adding extra saturated fat and sodium and learn how to choose appropriately in restaurants.
2. Being Active
This means engaging in aerobic activity, strength building and flexibility training most days of the week. Being active can help control blood glucose levels if you have type 2 diabetes and improve cardiovascular health and assist in weight loss or control for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
You need to know what activities are appropriate for you to do, how often and how forcefully you need to do them and how to handle the possible side effects of exercise (hypo and hyperglycemia.)
3. Monitoring
Checking your blood glucose allows you and your health care provider to see how your blood sugars are responding to the medications and lifestyle regimen you are following and whether changes are needed.
How to monitor, how often to monitor and how to interpret the results of blood glucose checks are all things you need to know in your search for good control.
4. Taking Medication
If you have type 1 diabetes you will be taking insulin for the rest of your life (or until a cure is found!)
If you have type 2 you may initially be able to control your blood glucose levels with lifestyle or with oral medications.
The longer you have diabetes the greater the chance that your beta cells (the cells that make insulin in the pancreas) will fail and you will need to take insulin. This is part of the natural progression of the disease and is not in your direct control.
It is important to understand how the medication you are taking works, how to properly take the medication and what side effects it may have. Knowing these things will make it easier for you to determine if your medication is working properly.
5. Problem Solving
The nature of the disease- it is chronic and progressive, it is affected by everyday activities such as eating and exercise, illness and stress- mean that people with diabetes are continually solving problems.
You need to know how to respond to high and low blood sugars with appropriate changes in activity, food and medicine.
How will you handle a buffet engagement dinner or what do you do if your pump malfunctions in the middle of giving a corporate board presentation?
6. Risk Reduction
In order to take care of yourself fully it is necessary to know what preventive care is required.
Blood pressure checks, regular eye, foot, dental exams, lab tests for microalbumin, cholesterol and lipid labs –knowing what these tests measure, what the therapeutic goals are, how frequently you should get them checked will help you plan your care more effectively.
7. Healthy Coping
Because diabetes is a chronic disease that is progressive and requires so much patient involvement it affects your psychological state as well as your physical being.
Often the whole family is affected. Having the skills to maneuver awkward social situations in a positive way, to remain motivated to engage in behaviors (such as healthy eating, or physical activity) to avoid letting the disease dictate your entire life requires the development of coping skills.
The Role of the Diabetes Educator
Each of these self care behaviors are difficult to follow, but all of them all of the time can be downright overwhelming. Diabetes educators are there to help. They assist diabetics in gaining knowledge about care behaviors.
And they do so much more. They work with people to identify the diabetics goals and the obstacles to meeting these goals. Together, an educator and a diabetic find ways to improve self-management and quality of life.
I would love to hear from you on the ways that you manage your diabetes and any difficulties you may experience.Any information, feedback or questions would be most welcome it would be a good way of learning from other diabetics who have had success with managing their diabetes.
You can leave your comments below or send an email to momo19@diabetessupportsite.com.
A dear friend is obese and has been warned that diabetes is in her future if she doesn’t lose weight. She’s struggled with her weight for nearly 40 years.
In your article, “Diabetic Management,” you mentioned coping skills. I think this is my friend’s issue. She doesn’t have the skills she needs to manage her emotions.
There’s a lot of pain in her past from a dysfunctional family and the death of her husband. Plus, her strict fundamental religion does not permit her to enjoy herself. In her mind, pleasure is associated with guilt. Her only pleasure is food.
I thought I should mention this because I suspect many people with diabetes struggle with the same issues.
Thanks for your informative comment.I am very sorry to hear of your friends health issues and that she is struggling to cope.
After reading about your friends problems I have been thinking it could be a good idea if I wrote a blog on the website about diabetes and mental health.
I will need to do a good amount of research first but I intend to include the topic of mental health into the website in the near future.
hi there,
Some great advice on here for people with diabetes. I don’t have diabetes but my mother does. Her blood sugar is always too high and she’s recently been put on insulin injections.
Are there certain foods that can help lower your blood sugar?
Once your on insulin is there any way you can manage your blood sugar to come of it?
Hi Adam,
Sorry to hear your mother constantly suffers from high blood sugars.There are certain foods that lower blood sugar many herbs and spices do for example cinnamon,garlic,ginger,and turmeric.I would suggest your mother read the post the importance of nutrition for diabetics in this website it will provide her with a lot of information on foods that lower blood sugars or stabilise blood sugars.
If your mother is a type 2 diabetic and considerably overweight she could
be taken off insulin if she manages to lose the weight and sticks to a healthy diet,exercises regularly and gets her blood glucose levels to a normal range.
However if she is a type1 diabetic like me and is not overweight she is very unlikely to ever be taken off insulin until a cure is found for diabetes.
There is a lot of healthy eating ideas and recipes in this website look in diabetic recipes online .
What a wonderful blog. You talked about allvthe targets. Diabetes is a serious chronic illness. I have a friend who just had a toe amputated, because their diabetes was out of control. They were half taking their insilin. Your blog is very informative. Love it. Strive for Success.
Hi Faith;
so sorry to hear what happened to your friend.
Diabetes can be a difficult illness to manage you have to be very vigilent and take your medication as often as your doctor prescribes wether it is insulin or tablets otherwise there are serious consequences.
So hope your friend is looking after his/her diabetes now i know myself how difficult and frustrating it can be.
Thanks so much for your encouraging comments i so hope this website will be helpful for everyone.
I don’t have diabetes but my best friend and several relative’s do. I’ve learned through reading and research on sites like yours that its not the death sentence it used to be or that we thought it was. People are taking better care of themselves and either prolonging dialysis, never needing it or being entirely cured of their diabetes.
Your site provides everything someone with diabetes would want to know. It tells them what to eat, how foods should be prepared and what to do to keep the diabetes under control.
Thank you.
Rawl so glad you like the website I only set it up a few weeks ago and I am planning to add loads more topics so if you have any ideas please let me know.
Hi there,
As someone who has PCOS and Insulin resistance (since I was about 17, I’m 23 now) trying to keep my blood sugar steady is something that I know I really need to do, but at the same time I sort of put it out of my mind.
This site’s a great resource for people coming to grips with this chronic disease before it takes too great a hold over their health.
As for me, after reading this it’s made me realise that I really do need to pay attention to my insulin resistance and pre-diabetes whilst I still have a chance.
Thanks again!
Katia
Hi Katia,
Great to hear from you.Thanks for all your positive comments about this website.
I Know its not easy trying to keep your blood sugar levels stable especially when you are young and leading a hectic busy life.
If you could try your best to eat healthy and regularly partake in any sort of physical activity this would go a long way in preventing this chronic disease taking too great a hold over your life.
I just set-up this website very recently so i will be adding more topics that will be helpful to you so please when you have the time check out this website again.
Wishing you a happy healthy life
Hi and thanks for sharing this interesting article! One of my friends had type 2 diabetes, but she got rid of it! Her doctor told her to quit with unhealthy food and alcohol etc. + to workout. Now she does not need to use any medication for that anymore. 🙂 Moreover, she had difficulties getting pregnant when she had diabetes but now she is a mother of two. 🙂
Hi Jess,
Delighted to receive your comment.
Thats great news that your friend managed to combat type 2 diabetes by changing to a healthy lifestyle and is now a happy healthy mother of two.
She is a great role model to encourage people to make healthy lifestyle choices!
I’ve had diabetes for a few years now and since I know how serious it is, I am doing everything I can to treat or reverse it. What you eat and the exercise you do is very important to keeping your sugar in check. There are a lot of factors associated with diabetes and stress is another one. If you’re diabetic, you should learn what you have to do and most important check your blood sugar levels frequently.
Hello Rob,
Yes I agree that diabetes treatment requires active participation by the person who has it. Monitoring your blood sugar level on a regular basis and analyzing the results is a crucial part of the treatment
The important thing is to know how to interpret the numbers and take the necessary action.
For example, if you take insulin and your blood sugar is high, you may need to bolus, or take more rapid-acting insulin, to bring your levels down into range.
If you manage your Type 2 diabetes with diet and exercise, you might treat high blood sugar with a walk or some other form of physical activity.
Regardless of how you manage your diabetes through diet and exercise alone or combined with oral medicines or insulin , regular blood sugar monitoring provides immediate feedback on how your program is working.
Great blog! Nice information about diabetes.
Its a good website. Thanks for giving full information about Womens Diabetic Footwear. You can also check at diabeticorthofootwearindia.com
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