When you’re diagnosed with diabetes, you quickly learn that your future wellbeing depends largely on your own efforts, and in order to prevent complications that damage your wellness, you need to have a plan in place. Though your plan should be as individual as you are, in order to get the best results, there are 4 essential elements that every plan should have to manage diabetes: eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, monitoring your blood sugar levels, and taking diabetes medication as prescribed.
Firstly, regulating your diet is important in order to keep your blood sugar levels in check. This generally means choosing healthy complex carbohydrates over sugary foods, cutting down your fat consumption, and increasing your fibre intake. Monique Richard of Nashville, Tennessee was 28 when she was diagnosed with diabetes, and said she began to read food labels very closely from that point onwards: ‘I scrutinized the processed foods to read the carb content and the sugar content’ and thought ‘Was this stuff ever good for me?’
Next, regular exercise can really improve your body’s ability to use insulin and process glucose, as well as reducing overall body fat and improving the wellness of your heart and lungs, so it’s a must in any diabetes life-plan. Even if you can only manage 20 minutes a day, experts advise daily exercise for people with type 2 diabetes, and the best results come from half-hour sessions of moderate-intensity aerobic activity like walking briskly, dancing, bicycling, running, or swimming for five days or more per week, and strength training two or three days a week.
When it comes to medication, there is a variety out there that can help you and your medical team will give you a drug regimen that you must strictly keep to in order to keep your diabetes in check. Richard says ‘For two years, it was a real struggle for me to get the right medications because it’s so different for each person’.
Finally, your plan should include regularly monitoring your blood glucose levels to avoid spikes or drops in blood sugar. You need to do this a least once to 4 times a day to check for these fluctuations, as they can be very damaging to the body and can contribute to long-term complications. It is also recommended by doctors that you get a haemoglobin A1C test every three months if you are taking insulin, or every six months if you are not, so that you can get a more accurate look at your blood glucose control.
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