1. Eat meals and snacks at regular times. The amount of carbohydrate in meals and snacks have to be consistent. One way of doing this is through carb counting. This involves counting the total grams of carbohydrates or serving of carbohydrate at each meal and snack. One serving usually contains fifteen grams of carbohydrate. This is important because carbohydrates usually reach their peak 90 to 120 minutes after eating. Your blood glucose levels will be erratic if your carbohydrate consumption is different for each meal unless of course you know how to adjust your insulin in conjunction with your carbohydrate intake.
2. Know what effects insulin, food, and physical activity have on your blood sugar readings. Therefore you have to keep a record of the food and insulin intake and your physical activity specially at the start and then observe how your body reacts to them. One of the members of your health care team will help you with this.
3. Match your insulin with meal consumption. The fast-acting insulin should be taken thirty minutes before a meal and very fast acting ones should be taken right before meal time.
4. Decrease or get rid of sweetened beverages. Drink only four ounces of fruit juice each day as carbohydrates in liquid form can increase the blood sugar level rapidly.
5. Know how to manage hypoglycemia. Low blood glucose reading of less than 70 may cause weakness, trembling, sweating, excessive hunger, confusion, irritability and sometimes loss of consciousness. But we will not let this happen to us for we will drink four ounces of regular soft drinks as soon as we feel the aforementioned symptoms. Wait for fifteen minutes and test your blood glucose to see if it has gone up. If the reading is still below 70 mg/dL after the first treatment, then have another fifteen grams of fast-acting carbohydrates. We will carry a pack of 5 lifesavers and an ounce of raisins to eat for any eventuality.
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Free Diabetes Alert
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