Living with Diabetes: How to Manage

Diabetes is a chronic condition that’s one of the deadliest diseases. It has been given the nickname, “the silent killer.” This disease alone directly caused an estimated of 1.6 million deaths in 2012 and another 2.2 million deaths that were attributable to high blood glucose. Diabetes has been given the 7th position in the leading cause of death in 2016.

Now, if you are a person which has to deal with living with diabetes, you do not need to worry. Although diabetes can affect almost every part of your body which makes you have limited activities, you can still manage to live a long and healthy life by taking good care of yourself each day. Want to know how to manage diabetes and as well as your life?

What is Diabetes?

Also called as “a touch of sugar”, diabetes does seem sounds sweet however it is sickeningly deadly. Diabetes is basically a disease that occurs when your blood glucose or blood sugar becomes too high. Since the blood glucose is your main source of energy, and insulin (a hormone made by the pancreas) helps glucose to be used for your body’s energy, diabetes gets triggered when the production of insulin isn’t sufficient enough which results into glucose staying in your blood and doesn’t reach the cells.

Which would cause health problems in the long run due to having too much glucose in your blood.

How to Manage Diabetes

So, how do you live your life to the fullest when you’re living with a deadly disease? Here’s how:

Manage Your ABCs

Manage you’re a for the A1C test, B for blood pressure, C for Cholesterol, and S for Smoking. By just managing these, you’ll surely help your blood glucose, blood pressure, and cholesterol from being overturned. Since working towards your ABCs goals can help lower the chances and risks of getting other serious health conditions such as heart attack, stroke, and other diabetes problems.

Follow a Diabetes Meal Plan

A healthy diet has never been out of the recommendation from medical practitioners and health gurus since eating healthily according to your body’s special needs can greatly help your body be as healthy as possible. Make a diabetes meal plan with the help from your doctor and follow it thoroughly. Make sure that you choose fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, and other foods that are lower in calories, saturated fat, sugar, and salt.

Physical Activity

You cannot hear a negative thing when you get physically active. Which is why you should go and set a goal to be more physically active to help your body be healthy as it can be. Just try to work up to 30 minutes of physical activity such as jogging, brisk walking, or any other forms of physical exercise.

Set a goal to be more physically active. Try to work up to 30 minutes or more of physical activity on most days of the week.

Medications and Treatments

For all it’s worth, medications and treatment shouldn’t be taken lightly since these are the ones that help your body in keeping it as healthy as possible and keeps the disease from progressing fast. Thus, take your medicines and treatments for diabetes and other health problems even if you feel that you’re feeling okay already.

The medications diabetes has can be taken orally and there are some that can be injected. For the drugs that are taken orally, Alpha-glucosidase inhibitors which are Acarbose (Precos), Miglitol (Glyset) are one of the examples that helps lower your blood sugar by blocking the breakdown in the body of the starchy food that you eat such as potatoes and bread.

On the other hand, is the injectable drugs such as the insulin injection which is the commonly recommended injectable drug for diabetes since it helps the body to cope up with the issues in insulin.  Other non-insulin injectable drugs are GLP-1 Receptor Agonists that stimulates insulin production while suppressing the liver’s glucose.

Another non-insulin injectable is Amylin Analogue, an example of it is Pramlintide (Symlin) which slows the food from moving too quickly through the stomach, helping it keep the after-meal glucose levels from going too high. Additionally, it also reduces glucose production of the liver.

Takeaway

Living with diabetes will give you lots of headaches and an emotional roller coaster ride. However, you can still enjoy the roller coaster ride it brings you if you’ll know how to manage this disease, so that it won’t control you any further and that you may live life to the fullest.

In living life to the fullest, one should be satisfied and happy in anyway. Therefore, by aiding your medications through injectable drug coupons, it would surely lessen the burden of your medication towards your wallet.