Monday, March 17, 2008

Fundamentals Of Diabetes Control And Diagnosis

When a person is diagnosed with diabetes one of the first things that he or she learns that proper diet is fundamental to keeping your sugar levels under control. Seeing to it that you maintain a healthy, balanced diet is the most beneficial path to controlling your diabetes and staying healthy. Just because you have diabetes does not mean that meals have to be uninteresting and, despite what most believe, the diabetic can usually consume just about anything but they do need to watch portion sizes closely. The all important point that the diabetic must remember is scheduling mealtimes in a way that they eat less and at the same time daily.

Meals must include plenty of whole grain, vegetables, and fruits in place of simple sugars, starches, and fats. As a matter of fact, these dietary guidelines should be practiced by anyone who wishes to enjoy a more wholesome lifestyle, especially those wanting to slim down.

An additional dietary modification that a lot of diabetics might want to implement is calorie counting. Counting calories is particularly useful for diabetics who take medicine to maintain their optimum blood sugar level. Those new to calorie counting should seek the aid of a dietician or nutritionist to learn how to do this correctly and the compile most beneficial combination of foods for every meal.

Learning how to eat properly for diabetes control can make a diabetic feel restricted and forced to eat in a way that is not to their liking. A diabetic should consume certain foods and refrain from others, but getting used to this can be challenging. However, by using the exchange-system diet plan, meals can be more interesting. This plan allows for the substitution of one food in a certain group for another of similar nutrients from the same group. This can liven things up a bit.

The diabetic must establish a schedule that includes specific times of the day that a meal or snack will be eaten and always consuming the proper portion size with an emphasis on smaller portions and cutting back on sugar and fats. The meals should be well balanced, and include items from all of the food groups of the diabetic food pyramid. The diabetic food pyramid, as opposed to the regular pyramid, groups foods in concert based on their starch and fat content. Such as, starchy vegetables are grouped with starches versus being grouped with other vegetables.

Maintaining a healthy body and keeping blood sugar levels steady, the diabetic is required to stick with their meal plan guaranteeing that they consume a nutritionally-balanced meal. The diabetic food pyramid is an excellent guide to employ in ascertaining what food groups to eat from and in what proportion. Diabetics must as well eat more modest meals than they would usually, while guaranteeing that their caloric intake is sufficient.

Importance Of Controlling Diabetes In Life

Controlling diabetes is nothing that should be undertaken by an amateur. Your diabetes treatment should always be supervised by a licensed physician. The plan is typically to keep your glucose from extremes of highs and lows. In order to do this many lifestyle changes are necessary.

Controlling your diet is the first plan of attack

One very important part of controlling your diabetes is eating a proper diet. While it is true that diet, exercise, and medications are always central, proper diet is possibly the most important key. Diabetics must begin the healthy habits now that probably would have helped them avoid becoming diabetics in the first place.

Exercise is always an important part of controlling diabetes.

Everyone will benefit from having a lifestyle that is healthy but for diabetics it is critically important. Regular exercise will help the body work much more efficiently by, among other things, speeding glucose into cells where it belongs and helping to dispose of excess glucose within the body.

Diabetics need to exercise every day. For some lucky individuals this is all that is necessary. For the majority of diabetics however, a balanced approach of exercise, diet, and medication is needed. But even for a diabetic, regular exercise will help one to have a stronger healthier heart and body. Exercise is something that a diabetic must learn to do consistently.

Uncontrolled diabetes will destroy your body.

Controlling diabetes means that you will be less likely to suffer from many of diabetes serious complications such as infections that would otherwise be minor becoming major infections, kidney damage, and eye damage. And then there is the issue of amputations of the feet and legs that are also quite often caused by uncontrolled diabetes.

There is some evidence that increasing soy protein in your diet may help to avoid many of the diabetic complications such as blockage of the arteries and kidney disease. While other of the complications of uncontrolled diabetes may not be helped by the addition of soy protein to one's diet, if it helps diabetics to avoid only two of the possible complications it is worth incorporating into one's diet. Diabetics should discuss this possibility with their doctors.

Controlling diabetes requires a major change in your lifestyle but the effort will be rewarded with a much healthier and longer life span. Medications that have been developed over the last 10 years also makes it a lot easier to control one's diabetes. However, a diabetic should never relax when their lifestyle changes or they may find that the diabetes creeps silently back into their life becoming an enormous health problem again. It is important for diabetics to remember this: Once a Diabetic Always a diabetic.