Treat Type 2 Diabetes and Related Diseases with Lifestyle Changes

A change in lifestyle can be so beneficial in treating type 2 diabetes. You know that lifestyle has quite an impact on this disease. How does lifestyle create such an impact? Well, being overweight along with low physical activity, is the most common cause of increasing insulin resistance.

That is why, changing those two lifestyle behaviors can reverse the damage this disease can cause. Even after developing type 2 diabetes, one still has a chance to prevent or reduce the complications by losing weight and increasing physical activity.

How is this possible? Well, since the pancreas have been so tired after many years of producing large amounts of insulin to compensate for the insulin resistance, it has now time to recover. You see they are not dead; they are just exhausted. Unlike in heart attack where the affected tissue remains dead, it is a different story with the pancreas. We can help them recover through lifestyle changes.

So get started to implement the changes in the lifestyle. The earlier this is done, the better it is all around. Just getting into a weight loss program with proper diet accompanied by increased physical activity will show positive results in the blood sugar levels.

Studies have shown that eating a few calories and exercising make blood sugar go down to the point that medications are not necessary. It is surprising sometimes when this happens but people believe it is because there has been an improvement in the secretion of insulin.

The same is true with increased physical activity. This lowers the blood sugar because it makes the muscle more responsive to insulin. Then over time this increased physical activity will help with the maintenance of weight loss.

Here are the five things one can do regarding changing one's lifestyle in order to make one's glucose level as close to the normal level as possible:

• Lower or stop the use of sweetened drinks.


• Lose five to ten pounds at the beginning.


• Make sure you have fiber in your meals.


• Have more physical activity.


• Eat several smaller meals regularly instead of one or two large meals.

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How to Manage Type 1 Diabetes Successfully

Are there tricks to managing type 1 diabetes successfully? You bet there are. Here are the essential things to control the condition and maintain the blood sugar levels within target levels in order to stay healthy. Pay attention to your daily routine, understand that lifestyle will have an effect on the blood sugar and learn to adjust your insulin dose to maintain the blood sugar level that the health care team and you have pointed out as to the correct level for you.

At the very beginning, being consistent with the scheduling of meals and of meal portions will help a lot. Then later on you will learn how to regulate your insulin intake that will commensurate with any inconsistency you may encounter. For instance, if you plan to go to a party with some friends where you may eat more than your usual portion, take your blood sugar reading before the event. If you find it is high , then you might have to give yourself ten units of rapid-acting insulin, which is about four units of the usual dose.

You should have conversations like this with your health care team before any events come up. Think of possibilities when you may have to change your meal times and portions as well as your physical activity and check with your doctor then. This way you are prepared for any eventuality.

In the same way, if you plan to play badminton and knowing this activity will lower your blood sugar level, you would have to lower the usual dose by some units. If you pay attention to this on a daily basis you should be able to master what you need to do. That is how to manage type 1 diabetes successfully.

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Lifestyle Related to Lower A1c Levels

Research has found that for those who want to reach their blood glucose level target to as close to the normal level as possible, there are four behavior patterns that will help them achieve this goal. What are they?

• Have a consistent daily eating plan.


• Adjust insulin dose to fit food intake.


• Act accordingly to high sugar level by lowering insulin dose and reducing food intake.


• Eat a regular snack at bedtime.

Eating about the same amount of carbohydrate each day will make it easier to manage the blood glucose level and match the insulin dose to fit the amount of food. At times when you eat more or less carbohydrates, adjust the insulin dose accordingly.

Your diabetes care team will help you learn how much one unit of insulin will lower your blood glucose level. It varies with different people. Eating a consistent snack at bedtime will help regulate the blood sugar level so this is one behavior you will be able to control.

There are two points that could make the A1c level higher. One is consuming more snacks at bedtime. We can't say this enough: Consistency is the key to better management of the blood sugar level.

The other behavior that could raise the A1c level is overtreating hypoglycemia. Make sure you follow the guidelines on how to treat this condition. The following site will show you how and the disclaimer. Just type in "how to treat hypoglycemia" in the Google Search and select the radio button for the following site:

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Nutrition Lifestyle Main Concerns To Maintain Normal Glucose Levels

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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Lifestyle Changes to Treat Diabetes

The lifestyle modification that we were supposed to undertake to prevent diabetes can also help treat it. Diabetes is distinctive in the sense that it affects all aspects of life like eating, physical activity, work, school, and travel and these in turn affect diabetes.

It is true that diseases require attention to taking the prescribed medication but diabetes is different in the sense that it entails watchfulness and awareness of the content and schedule of meals, physical activity, medications, glucose checking and an assortment of self-care requirements.

It is a touchy disease to the point that if you ignore it for a little time, it will make you pay. How? With painful and life-threatening hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia. And if you pay no attention to it for a longer period of time, it will penalize you more with much severe complications of blindness, foot ulcers and amputation, kidney failure and heart disease. But it is not going to happen to any of us because we will pay attention to food, exercise and seeing a doctor.

We are lucky to be living in this day and age when with the medical advances we can live longer in a most productive way and be free of those nasty complications. All we have to do is to take care of it. It is not asking much considering what we will get in return. This diabetes type of treatment is often called the lifestyle approach to the ABC's of management. We will cover this later but if you want it now, go to:

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Preventing Diabetes With Medication and Lifestyle Changes

The Diabetes Prevention Program works hard at helping us uncover the ways and means to prevent diabetes. Not only did it study the effect of lifestyle changes, it also tested the importance of medicine like metformin in preventing diabetes. Metformin is the medicine that is usually used in treating diabetes. It lowers insulin resistance and the amount of sugar produced by the liver.

We know that diabetes develops gradually to the point the symptoms sometimes do not appear for as long as twelve years and by then, who knows what complications may have already set in. That is why it is good idea to be screened for diabetes if you are at risk for developing the disease. For now, let us examine what happens before the diagnosis is even made. Insulin resistance is slowly increasing causing the blood sugar levels to go up. To combat this, the pancreas tries valiantly to manufacture more insulin but in turn it gets so tired, insulin secretion breaks down. And what is the result? Type 2 diabetes, that's what.

That is why the Diabetes Prevention Program studied the medication that lowers insulin resistance to see if it is successful in preventing diabetes. This what they found. It lowered the risk for developing diabetes by 31%. But here is the kicker. The Diabetes Prevention Program found lifestyle changes lowered the risk of diabetes by 58%. How cool is that!

Which method would you choose to reduce the risk for diabetes? Is it through medication or through lifestyle modification? There are side effects in medication. And this is what surprised me. They said that lifestyle modification also has side effects although fewer ones. What side effects are they talking about here? Perhaps, achy breaky muscles at the start or lack of time? I don't know. People who know about the side effects of lifestyle modification, please enlighten me because I can't think of any.

Someday, they might find that the combination of medication and lifestyle changes is the most effective way to prevent diabetes. The Diabetes Prevention Program has not studied this yet. And here is another kicker for you. Sometimes, lifestyle changes can reduce or do away with the medication.

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We're Eating More

Food has become more abundant and reasonably priced than before because the farming industry has been mechanically changed. There's more fish and vegetables yet the total calories from fat that people eat are still the highest. So not only do we eat more, we also eat the wrong food.

It is not a bad thing to have an oversupply of food, but the trouble is we suffer from overnutrition. That means we put on more calories than we spend in physical activities. And to make matter worse we don't have to work to obtain the food we eat, meaning we do not have to plant, to hunt for them, build a fire to cook, chop the wood for the fire, carry water from the well that we have to pump ourselves, churn butter and so on. The list is endless.

Not only that, most of the food we eat have been super-sized. Just look at the evolution of the hamburger. First, it became a cheeseburger. Then it turned into a double cheeseburger. Then this turned into a double bacon cheeseburger. What will we think of next? Put an egg on top of this, that's what. Serving sizes have increased and we have become addicted to these. No, we demand them. We patronize restaurants that offer us larger sizes. And buffets? Forget it for we flock to them like bees to honey.

So is it any wonder that we have become vulnerable to diabetes? Some rationalize and say, "Oh, it's because of aging and overweight." Wait a minute. Diabetes and metabolic syndrome affect 25% of the population and only 2.3% is severely obese and only 3.3% is older than eighty years old. So wake up and smell the roses for if we continue to deny this, we will have one huge nightmare.

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