Health Care Guidelines

Diabetes Management is not just keeping blood sugar under control, but its about protecting our organ system from complications of Diabetes and Assuring good quality of life for people living with Diabetes. For effective Diabetes care, one needs to focus on following four pillars of Diabetes Management:

• Diet
• Exercise
• Medicine
• Monitoring

Each has its own set of guidelines and disciplines that you need to follow. While many things are dependent on the type of diabetes and the effects of it on human body, there are certain guidelines that are generic for all! Here are those guidelines on all the above given aspects of Diabetes management:

Diet

While each person has different eating habits and patterns, there are certain nutrients that a diabetic must consume and avoid! It is the nutrition that is important and not the source of it. Also, when we talk about Diet in diabetes, there are three questions that must be answered and those three questions are:

• When to eat?
• How to eat?
• What to eat?

The following are the answers to all of the above three questions:

When to Eat?

The answer to that is simple! You must eat only when you feel hungry. While this might seem easy while you read, people have tendency of eating and not eating based on their emotional quotient! Like some people eat when they feel sad and some don’t eat when they are depressed.

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You will have to make your health your priority and avoid over eating or unnecessary eating at all cost. And the eating must happen in this order:

• Heavy Breakfast
• Moderate Lunch
• Light dinner
   

How to Eat?

Diabetics must follow the Japanese quote “Hara Hachi Bu” which means that one must eat till they are 80% full or one must leave the last 5 bites of their meal left in their plates. Apart from that, diabetics also have to manage their "Hunger Scale". This means that you must not wait till you are really hungry and that you will eat anything that is given to you and you must not eat till you are stuffed!

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Here are the ideal times when you must eat

When you are neither hungry nor full

You must start thinking what to eat as and when you start feeling hungry
 

What to eat?

This is the trickiest question to be answered because as diverse as Indians are in culture, they are even more diverse in their eating habits! Each state and religion has their own eating routine and it is difficult to generalise it! But, we have a solution, instead of pointing out what to eat and what not to eat, we are listing the proportion of nutrients that you must consume during your meal. Here are the portions that you must consume:

Your meal must consist of:

• 25% Lean Protein
• 25% Grain Foods and Starchy Vegetables
• 50% non Starchy Vegetables

Learn how to make a Healthy Plate.

Exercise Guidelines

Exercise is the second most important aspect of Diabetes Management. Here are the generic Healthcare Guidelines that you must follow:

• Walking is the best exercise for diabetics. You must walk 5 KMs daily without stopping for at least 5 days per week in the time span of 45-50 minutes
• Do more of isotonic exercises like running, jogging, sports etc.
• Don’t exercise right after a meal or after taking your insulin
• Have a light snack or juice before you exercise
• Do Yoga daily
   

Medicine Guidelines

The third aspect of Diabetes Management is Medicines! While most of the guidelines are simple, it is essential that you stay away from the myths as well that are associated with Diabetes Care. So, following are the guidelines to follow and the myths to avoid:

Myths:

“My friend has to take only one medicine and so I don’t need to take three.” Medicines in Diabetes people is given according to their type of diabetes, acoording to the root cause responsible for thir Diabetes, according to kidney function and according to individual weight and phenotype.

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"If I will take Diabetic medicines for long, it may affect my kidney functions".

This is totally wrong. Rather uncontrolled sugar damages the all vital organs like kidney, Heart, Eyes, Nerves, not the medicines. So if one takes medicine regularly and keep sugar under conttrol, one can save their all vital organs including kidney.

know your BLUE INDEX: THE DIABETES HEALTH SCORE.

 

"Insulin can be addictive and once started, I will have to take it for lifetime"

Insulin is a hormone and its necessary to sugar transport and metabolism. Sometime if sugar level is very high, doctor may start insulin to reduce the glucotoxicity and speed up recovery, which can be stopped if your pancreas is produces enough insulin.

Guidelines:

• If you follow the Diet and Exercise regime and yet you cannot control Diabetes, you will have to take pills.
• If you are Type-2 diabetic, pills can work or you but with ageing, one might have to switch to insulin as well.
• Insulin injections are the only solution for Type-1 diabetes.
• Insulin Pump is one of the advance method to deliver Insulin

So, here are the generic Healthcare Guidelines that one must follow. If you need to know more about Diabetes or you wish to get complete Diabetes care, book an appointment with our expert Diabetologist and Endocrinologist today!

Monitoring:

SMBG: Self Monitoring of Blood glucose

CGM: Continuous Glucose Monitoring

AGP: Ambulatory Glucose Profile