For the treatment of diabetes, there are several main aspects.
Health education, patients should have a healthy understanding of diabetes, and patients and their families should learn basic health care under the guidance of their physicians to fully understand the dangers of diabetes and acquire self-management skills.
Medical nutrition therapy, as the patient is unable to utilize blood glucose during the disease or causes abnormalities in the function of some organs and tissues, requires a reasonable diet under the guidance of a clinical dietitian to maintain a normal weight. The main components include reasonable control of total calories and nutrient distribution (e.g., diabetic patients should choose foods with low glycemic index, salt intake should be limited to less than 6g per day, smoking cessation and alcohol restriction, etc.), reasonable meal distribution (formulated according to the extent of the patient’s condition), and follow-up visits.
Exercise therapy, 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week, maintained for half an hour each time, is recommended.
Medication. When diet and exercise therapy do not bring blood glucose under control, oral hypoglycemic drugs or insulin injections, etc., are required.
Psychological counseling. Because diabetes is a chronic disease and treatment is expensive, and patients need to take medication for life, this is difficult for patients to accept and often leads to depression and anxiety, which in turn can worsen the disease, so psychological counseling treatment is needed.