Diabetes Management: Ways to Manage Your Diabetes for Life

Managing your diabetes is a daily challenge throughout your 365 days a year. Although it would seem to be a difficult task at first and sounds like a daunting routine to keep up with, the effort is all worth it. Surely, you’ll feel much better right away and would have more energy when your healthy diabetes management routine would be religiously done. Diabetes Management: Ways to Manage Your Diabetes for Life

Keeping your blood sugar levels as close to normal as possible would mean that you are succeeding in managing your diabetes —which also means that this is the key. True, it might sound harsh at first, but there are simple ways in managing your diabetes for life, here’s how.

Learn About Diabetes:

The first step that you should always do in battling any illness is to know what it is, why it occurs, and what causes it. By equipping yourself with this knowledge, you will be able to understand how to handle yourself or your loved one who is diagnosed with diabetes. Thus, here are  three main types of diabetes:

Type 1 Diabetes: A kind of diabetes wherein the body is not able to make insulin. This is a problem that poses a threat to your body since you need insulin to take the sugar (glucose) from the food that you consume and turn it into energy to fuel your body.

Type 2 Diabetes: This is the most common type of diabetes and is another set that does not make or use your body’s insulin well. In this setup, you may need to take pills or insulin injectables.

Gestational Diabetes: The third type is more of due to women being pregnant. This type of diabetes mostly fades out after the baby is born. However, even if it goes away, the woman and her child may have higher chances of getting diabetes later in life.

You are the most critical member of your healthcare team since you are the only one who manages your diabetes day by day. Thus, it is essential to talk to your doctor on how to take care of your body to stay healthy. To know more about diabetes, find a class or check with your health care team, join a support group, or search online for more information.

Know Your Diabetes’ ABC’s:

So, what is this so-called ABC of diabetes? The ABC here stands for managing your A1C, Blood pressure, and Cholesterol. These three are the things that you should highly look out for if you want to control your diabetes since it can help lower your chances of having heart attacks, stroke, or any other diabetes problems.

A for the A1C:

The A1C is a blood test wherein it measures your average blood sugar level over the past three months, which is slightly different from the blood sugar that you regularly do each day.

This test is important since it tells you about your blood sugar levels over time. Since this is its primary purpose, it keeps you on track if your blood sugar has gone up high or down low. If your blood sugar is high, then it may harm your blood vessels, heart, kidneys, feet, and eyes.

B for Blood Pressure:

It is commonly known that in diabetes, you need to be cautious about your blood pressure. So, what is blood pressure and why should you get worried about it? Technically speaking, blood pressure is the force of your blood against the wall inside of your blood vessels. In this sense, if your blood pressure gets too high, then it would make your heart work too hard making it cause a heart attack, stroke, or damage to your eyes or kidneys.

How will you know if your blood pressure is high? Grab a blood pressure meter and check out your blood pressure. Most people with diabetes are below 140/90. However, it may be different for you ; thus ask your doctor about how much should your blood pressure be.

C for Cholesterol:

Cholesterol has two types namely LDL or the bad cholesterol in layman’s term, and the HDL or the food cholesterol. Now, LDL, the bad cholesterol within your body builds up and clogs your blood vessels, creating a cause for heart attack or stroke. On the other hand, HDL, which is good cholesterol, helps remove the bad cholesterol within your blood vessels.

Monitor your cholesterol by asking your doctor on what the numbers should be for you, since your goals may differ from other people.

Takeaway:

Diabetes is like a one-man team wherein it causes a number of diseases that involve problems with insulin—a hormone in our body that mainly helps in storing and using the sugar from the food that you eat by turning it into our body’s fuel. In this case, insulin is usually provided through injections.

Tips to Avoid Diabetes Complications

With this being said, it would be wise to know more about your diabetes case by gathering information about this disease and all of its possible treatments. Lastly, you should ask your doctor about the prescribed medications in order to understand and be able to administer well the needed hormone into your body to help you out in taking good care of your health. You could read books or visit sites like Pharma Quotes