If you have recently found out you have diabetes, the following tips can help you get a handle on self-management.
Understand the basics
Understand the basics: This will go a long way in helping patients gain insight into what factors contribute to diabetes, what steps they can take to manage the disease, and how to prevent related health problems.
Patients should ask their doctor to do a thorough evaluation of their condition.
Understand what factors can affect blood glucose levels
- Patients need to keep an ongoing record of their blood glucose levels in a diary.
- Patients also need to keep track of the foods they eat, the time they do exercise, how stressed they are that day, and so on.
- Patients can use these notes to identify patterns and share the information with their doctor.
- For example, do you notice your blood sugar levels in the morning? Do you notice a spike in your nighttime blood sugar after a late night snack? Do you eat regularly or do you go a long time between meals?
- With these details, it doesn’t take much trial and error to help patients and doctors better plan for diabetes care.
Seeking support
- Family, friends, health coaches or behavioral health counselors can all greatly improve a patient’s control of diabetes.
- In a support group, patients can find some peers who are in the same situation as they are.
- Or seek guidance from a mental health professional to help move past the many negative emotions that come with a diagnosis of diabetes.
Do not do the following
- Get all your information from the Internet only: When patients make inquiries on the Internet, they should choose websites that are reliable and that have evidence-based research to support their assertions.
- Following fad diets blindly: Eliminating certain nutrients (such as carbohydrates) from recipes altogether and extreme diets such as these to reduce weight or control blood sugar can be dangerous for patients.
- Overestimating your ability: Don’t think about making too many changes at once. Take your time so you don’t lose out to bad habits.
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