Maintaining an acceptable blood glucose level is the only way that you are going to protect your health, live a long life, and avoid the potential complications of diabetes. There are many different methods of doing so, from lifestyle changes to herbal supplements to prescription medications. Following, you will find twenty effective tips for ensuring that you remain at an acceptable blood glucose level and protect your continued health for years to come. Just remember that even though the lifestyle changes gradually come into effect over several weeks, they provide the best chance at long-term success.
Figure Out What An Acceptable Blood Glucose Level Is
After all, how can you be expected to maintain an acceptable blood glucose level if you don’t know what what is the normal blood sugar level for you? The prospect is made even more confusing due to the fact that blood glucose levels are supposed to vary somewhat throughout the day. To make things easy, just remember that there are three primary times to check.
Monitor Your Blood Glucose Levels Carefully
Now that you know what acceptable blood glucose levels are, you need to make the effort and take the time to closely monitor them so that you know what your blood glucose count is throughout the day. In doing so, you can not only work to ensure that you stay within the right blood glucose level range, but you will be able to understand how different types of foods affect you and can adjust your diet accordingly. It is important to perform a blood glucose level test in the morning, before bed, and two hours after eating so you can map out how you respond.
Don’t Chase Your Blood Glucose Count
This one may seem counterintuitive to most people, but it is also very important. Let’s assume that your blood glucose reading drops to 65 mg/dL, so you decide that you need to eat a few glucose tablets to bring it back up. An hour later, you check again and find that your blood glucose has risen to 220 mg/dL. To counter this, you take a shot of insulin or skip a meal, sending your blood glucose plummeting. Think of it like driving along the highway; the way forward is to make tiny adjustments as necessary in order to keep your blood sugar levels normal.
Say Goodbye to Refined Carbohydrates
Cake, ice cream, white bread, pasta, and most processed foods are off the menu for diabetics. These highly processed, refined, simple carbohydrates affect blood glucose more than just about anything else that you can possibly eat. If you are serious about maintaining acceptable blood glucose levels, now is the time to say goodbye to these items, as even a rare piece of cake or plate of pasta can send your blood glucose numbers skyrocketing afterward.
Learn About the Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load
The glycemic index was developed at the University of Sydney, and basically entails assigning a numerical value to each food to represent just how much of an effect that food has on your blood glucose. Glycemic load takes it a step further and takes the appropriate serving size of that food into account. One of the best things that you can do to maintain an acceptable blood glucose level is to avoid foods that have a high glycemic load and focus on those foods that are very low on the glycemic index.
Lose Weight
When a person is first diagnosed as having type 2 diabetes, one of the first things that the doctor will recommend as a means of treating the condition is significant weight loss, especially when the person being diagnosed is obese. There are many different reasons for this.
Aside from the presence of fat cells interfering with the body’s ability to make use of the glucose in the blood, patients who lose weight usually do so by making other lifestyle changes that are beneficial in helping to maintain an acceptable blood glucose level.
Eat More Garlic
Diabetes usually comes with a whole host of other chronic medical conditions, most of which are actually responsible for most of the complications of diabetes that we are aware of, such as kidney failure, retinopothy, and various heart problems. One of the main perpetrators of these conditions is hypertension, also known as high blood pressure. Garlic is a powerful high blood pressure fighter and can be as effective as many prescriptions.
Photo Credit: Karen Barefoot
Photo Credit: Karen Barefoot
Get Plenty of Fiber Into Your Diet
Fiber is the most important thing that a diabetic can work into his or her diet. Fiber has many different functions when it comes to fighting diabetes, from slowing the absorption of glucose into the blood to keeping you feeling fuller longer. Most of it should come in the form of high-fiber vegetables such as spinach, broccoli, and others.
Eat The Right Kinds of Protein and Fat
Protein contains the building blocks that the body needs to repair and rebuild itself, build new muscles, and maintain proper function, but not all proteins are created equal. The same goes for fats. The ideal meats that you should be consuming are fairly lean meats that ideally contain a large percentage of omega 3 fatty acids. Meats like fish and grass-fed beef and bison, as well as free range eggs are ideal.
Keep A Consistent Diet
That is not to say that you should be eating the same food at every meal every day, but instead the various components of each meal should remain the same in order to help you consume the right amount of calories and the right amount of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. The best way to determine what exactly your needs are is to work with your doctor and a nutritionist to establish a custom eating plan specifically for you.
Maintain a Varied Diet
Even though the primary composition of each meal needs to remain fairly consistent in order to make it easier to maintain an acceptable blood glucose level, you are still going to need to keep the actual contents of each meal as different and varied as possible. This allows you to consume a wide range of vitamins and minerals, thereby ensuring proper nutrition. It also keeps you from getting bored and becoming tempted to turn to unhealthy foods instead.
Think Grazing Instead of Eating
Instead of consuming three large meals per day, you are better able to maintain proper blood glucose control by consuming several mini meals throughout the day. This helps you avoid sharp dips and spikes in favor of more modest shifts.
Stop Drinking Calories
This is a blood glucose control tip that is good advice for not only diabetics, but everyone. When you consume extra calories in the form of sugary drinks and soda pop, you are consuming a highly refined sugar that rapidly enters the bloodstream, resulting in sharp spikes. It also contributes to weight gain because these are calories that are seldom noticed by the consumer or even counted when consuming their meals.
Exercise Frequently
Regular exercise is vital in maintaining an acceptable blood glucose level because during exercise, the exercise is using up all the excess glucose floating around in the blood. It also contributes to muscle formation, weight loss, and good cardiovascular health.
Build Muscle Mass
Muscle mass behaves differently from other types of tissues when it comes to its use of blood glucose. Having a larger proportion of muscle mass in relation to other tissues, particularly body fat, makes maintaining an acceptable blood glucose level much easier because it is always using the glucose in the blood, helping keep those levels under control.
Take Your Medication Religiously
When your doctor lays out a schedule for you to take whatever prescriptions you have been placed on, it is of vital importance that you keep to that schedule. Failure to do so could potentially lead to dips or spikes in your blood glucose that could lead to other problems, such as passing out due to a sudden drop.
Consider Alternative Supplements
There are many different potential herbal remedies for high blood glucose that you could make use of. Growing support exists for the use of Pycnogenol, or French maritime pine bark extract, in the treatment of not only high blood glucose, but also many of the complications that occur as a result of type 2 diabetes.
Speak to Your Doctor Before Any Big Changes
Whenever it comes to any chronic medical condition, whether it be diabetes, high blood pressure, renal failure, or anything else, you need to proceed under the supervision and with the help of your primary care physician, preferably one who has a lot of experience working with diabetics. Any time you make a major dietary or lifestyle change, you need to include your doctor so that you don’t risk any serious complications as a result of that change. For example, if you suddenly begin exercising a lot, you may need to have your prescription altered so you don’t suffer from low blood glucose.
Reduce Your Stress Level
It is widely known that stress levels can have a very profound effect on your physical and mental health, though most people think more in terms of anxiety, blood pressure, and depression when they make that connection.
The truth goes further than that; high stress levels can also not only directly affect your blood glucose control, but also lead you to turn to sugary food as a coping mechanism to deal with that stress.
Instead, you need to find other ways of coping with that stress. Take a long bath, go for a walk, read a book, work out, or play with a dog or cat instead. You just need to find out what works for you.
Be Disciplined
Let’s face it. Many of these changes are going to be very difficult for most people, and seemingly impossible for many. The thing to keep in mind is that you are working to maintain an acceptable blood glucose level for a very important reason – you are protecting your good health, prolonging your lifespan, and ensuring that you will enjoy a higher quality of life with fewer medical problems. Good luck.
