Managing Diabetes How Are You Managing Your Diabetes?

Managing your diabetes and getting normal blood sugars can be quite a task.  Having diabetes involves more than just taking your medications and forgetting about it.  There are many approaches to diabetes management, but every approach involves the following:

1.  Understanding Your Diabetes - In order to get good control you must learn the basics of  how your diabetes causes your body to respond to your lifestyle.  The food you eat, your activities, and your emotional and physical state all have a major impact on how well you are able to control your diabetes.  Make sure to learn all you can about how your body functions and how that functioning affects your diabetes.

2. Self-Monitoring -  No matter  how good your doctor is, he can only give you expert advise and prescribe medications to help you manage your diabetes.  Diabetes management is up to you the diabetic.  Self-monitoring requires, regularly checking your blood sugar and keeping a log book of the test results, monitoring your activity, your diet, and even your attitude. Getting and maintaining good diabetes control and good health requires much self analysis.  You must be willing to commit to this one area or your health and your life will suffer.

3. Diet- In every case of diabetes type 1, type 2, or gestational diabetes a change of diet is recommended to get better blood sugar control. Diet for diabetes control is so important I've devoted a whole section on this blog devoted to diabetes and nutrition  

4. Activity -  Just ask any health professional and they all will tell you that regular exercise and activity will help you control your diabetes.  Being physicall fit and active helps your metabolism, your blood pressure, your heart, your energy level and even how well you sleep.  There is no substitute for exercise.  Again, this is so important there's several articles relating to diabetes and fitness.

5. Regular Check-ups -  With diabetes it is important to see your doctor regularly, have regular a1c tests and make sure get professional help whenever necessary. Diabetes can bring complications such as kidney disease, eye problems and blindness, neurological problems and amputations, and heart and circulatory problems it is important to get regular check-ups and have the proper screening tests performed to ensure all your bodily systems are functioning properly.