Diabetes is a very tricky disease. Once your body stops producing insulin to regulate your blood sugar, it can spike dramatically or crash suddenly depending on how you eat and how active you are. Your body still needs ample food and energy, but you need to be very careful of what you’re putting into your body.
When you think of white foods, you probably think of things like rolls, biscuits, bread, sugar, and other starchy items. Well, these are great foods to avoid. You definitely don’t want anything to do with simple carbohydrates. These carbs will cause blood sugar spikes in healthy people. For people with diabetes, these spikes are exponentially more dangerous.
As alluded to in the first tip, you need to understand the difference between a simple carb and a complex carb. A complex carbohydrate (whole wheat, grain, brown rice and pasta, etc) will take a long time for the body to break down. This means that the sugar is released slowly over a longer duration. White sugar, a simple carb, is burned up quickly and thus released all at once.
You should not only cut down on the simple sugars, but your overall carbohydrate consumption should fall. If you were just on a diet, then complex carbs would be fine. But since your body isn’t producing the hormone that regulates your blood sugar, even too many complex carbs can be very dangerous for you. It’s better to cut back across the board.
A lot of people who miss a dose of insulin will double dose the next day or just attempt to catch up in some other way. This is very bad for you. Insulin is given regularly because your body needs to regulate its blood sugar. Missing doses, even by a few hours, can throw your system completely off.
Insulin may not be the only type of medicine you take. Just because you have diabetes doesn’t mean that you won’t be stricken with any other type of illness. So if you’re taking any other type of medicine at all, make sure that you’re reading the ingredients carefully. Avoid medications containing sugar.
Alcohol, for all its effects, is essentially just sugar. Especially when dealing with beer or wine, you are ingesting a whole lot of sugar. Some diabetics will drink alcohol because they claim it actually makes them feel better. Well, they are tempting fate in a big way. You should limit your alcohol consumption drastically.
As with the tip above about insulin, the whole idea there is that your body needs to regulate its blood glucose levels. The same holds true with your diet. If you’re not eating regularly, your body isn’t receiving glucose regularly. This means you’re in danger of throwing your system off track.
Sugar is not needed to make things taste sweet. With a ton of artificial sweeteners on the market, and even sweeteners that are actually made of sugar, you can get your fill of sweet-tasting items without having to ingest a single carbohydrate.
Because your body needs to regulate its sugar, it might seem contradictory to eat many meals and snacks throughout the day. However, we’re talking about small meals and small snacks. Constantly feeding the body will ensure that you always have some blood sugar, just not a lot of it. Remember, low blood sugar is the big danger with diabetes.
Whether you have a new-age monitor that can draw blood from the arm, or even if you’re stuck with sticking your finger, it’s important that your glucose levels are checked regularly. You should be checking at least two times per day.
Diabetes can be maintained as long as you’re serious about staying out in front of the disease. Remember to implement the advice you have learned here if you want to fight back against this disease.