Test your blood sugar and keep a record of the results.Develop a healthy eating and activity plan.Whether you were just diagnosed with diabetes or have had it for some time, meeting with a diabetes educator is a great way to get support and guidance, including how to: Make regular appointments with your health care team to be sure you’re on track with your treatment plan and to get help with new ideas and strategies if needed. Talk to your doctor and diabetes educator about these and other ways you can manage stress. Regular physical activity, getting enough sleep, and relaxation exercises can help. Stress is a part of life, but it can make managing diabetes harder, including managing your blood sugar levels and dealing with daily diabetes care. Keeping your blood sugar levels as close to target as possible will help you prevent or delay diabetes-related complications. Ask your doctor how often you should check it and what your target blood sugar levels should be. You’ll need to check your blood sugar regularly. It’s also important to keep your blood pressure and cholesterol close to the targets your doctor sets for you and get necessary screening tests. You’ll still need to eat healthy and be active if you take insulin or other medicines. You may be able to manage your diabetes with healthy eating and being active, or your doctor may prescribe insulin, other injectable medications, or oral diabetes medicines to help manage your blood sugar and avoid complications.
Managing diabetes can be challenging, but everything you do to improve your health is worth it! Unlike many health conditions, diabetes is managed mostly by you, with support from your health care team (including your primary care doctor, foot doctor, dentist, eye doctor, registered dietitian nutritionist, diabetes educator, and pharmacist), family, and other important people in your life. If you’ve gotten your blood sugar tested at a health fair or pharmacy, follow up at a clinic or doctor’s office to make sure the results are accurate. Testing for Type 2 DiabetesĪ simple blood test will let you know if you have diabetes. Because symptoms can be hard to spot, it’s important to know the risk factors and to see your doctor to get your blood sugar tested if you have any of them. Type 2 diabetes symptoms often develop over several years and can go on for a long time without being noticed (sometimes there aren’t any noticeable symptoms at all). High blood sugar is damaging to the body and can cause other serious health problems, such as heart disease, vision loss, and kidney disease. Eventually your pancreas can’t keep up, and your blood sugar rises, setting the stage for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.
Your pancreas makes more insulin to try to get cells to respond. If you have type 2 diabetes, cells don’t respond normally to insulin this is called insulin resistance. Insulin is a hormone made by your pancreas that acts like a key to let blood sugar into the cells in your body for use as energy. Type 2 diabetes most often develops in people over age 45, but more and more children, teens, and young adults are also developing it. More than 37 million Americans have diabetes (about 1 in 10), and approximately 90-95% of them have type 2 diabetes. Healthy eating is your recipe for managing diabetes.