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Saturday, May 31, 2008

Normal Blood Glucose Levels and Lifestyle Behavior - Part 1

May 31, 2008

Normal blood glucose levels, how do we achieve them? Is there really life after a diagnosis of diabetes? This questions along with others are never far from my mind. My passion, and I am determined to accomplish this, is to show people how simple it really is. Let me try, okay?

1. Lessen or stop the consumption of sweetened drinks. Try not to drink any regular soda and fruit punch unless of course one is having a hypoglycemic episode when one of the treatment options is to drink regular soda. And keep fruit juice intake to just four ounces a day because they make the blood glucose levels go up quickly. Take a lesson from our experience. Thinking orange juice is healthy, we drank it like there was no tomorrow. And then after the diabetes diagnosis we found out that the orange juice we were buying had 37 grams of sugar. Yikes!

2. Speaking of hypoglycemia, manage it properly. This condition is a reading of low blood glucose level, as low as less than 70. The signs are sweating, weakness, excessive hunger, being irritable, trembling and confusion. Sometimes one may even lose consciousness. The treatment for this is to consume a fast-acting carbohydrate that is at least 15 grams. The examples of fast-acting carbohydrates in this case are four ounces of regular soda or apple or orange juice. Five lifesavers or three glucose tablets each containing five grams of carbohydrates or one ounce of raisins will also do the trick. Each of the aforementioned treatment options will usually raise the blood glucose level by 50 in fifteen minutes or so. Check the level then and if it is still below 70, then the treatment can be repeated. If it persists and there is another health concern, one may have to see a doctor.

3. The schedule for both meal times and insulin injection has to match. The health care provider will help in determining the type of insulin to inject with the meal scheduling. For example there are fast-acting insulin that one can take half an hour before meals. But there are even faster acting ones one can take right before a meal.

This is getting too long and readers may get bored reading this so what I will do is write about other lifestyle behaviors that contribute to normal blood glucose levels next week. For clarity sake, I will put Part 1 on the title of this blog,

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