Living with diabetes

Diabetes mellitus, especially Type II, has reached an epidemic level!
Diabetes is a slow, insidious disorder, that slowly and steadily, destroys every organ of your body- from your eyes to your toes. It is extremely essential to have a strict control over this disease, which can only be ensured, by consuming your meals on time, taking all the medicines regularly and going for regular walk or some other form of physical exercise.

One may assume that since one’s blood sugars are anyway high in diabetics, it makes sense to skip a meal to bring that level down. This may sound logical, but is in fact, quite detrimental to a diabetic. When you don’t eat, your liver helps to maintain the energy levels by producing glucose. When you are a diabetic, your liver does not know how to do this. As a diabetic, if you skip a meal, your liver will try to compensate for that perceived energy loss, by actually producing more sugars, which only adds to the already excess amounts of sugars floating in your blood. This way, you will end up increasing your blood sugar level, in an attempt to reduce it! Hence, never skip a meal, especially breakfast.

When the blood sugar level is unnaturally high in your blood, the body tries several things to bring it down. All these attempts go against the natural functioning of the body. This is why we help the body externally, by giving oral glucose-lowering medications, or insulin injections. Taking the medicines on time and regularly, ensures that these external agents do their job by lowering the sugar levels and the body gets to function in accordance to its own pattern.
Skipping a dose of medication can be risky. The body may respond negatively to your raised glucose levels. Also if you skip medications regularly, then the control over the disease is hampered and you may end up needing stronger medicines to regain the control.

Diabetes mellitus is, as said earlier, an insidiously growing disease. No matter how well controlled your sugar levels are, the end organs keep getting affected at a slow and steady pace. Hence, it is important to go for regular checkups s to the physician. The regular blood sugar testing, is not always enough and your doctor may suggest more advanced tests to better understand the progress of your disease. He may or may not change the medication, as required.
A general whole-body checkup, at regular intervals, is also highly recommended. Since diabetes affects the end organs surely, it is better to keep getting yourself checked regularly, to detect damages at the earliest and prevent further damage and organ loss.

Exercising or any form of physical activity, helps burn off the excess sugars in the blood, and thereby helps to keep the blood sugar levels under control. A brisk walk for 30 minutes can not only make you feel rejuvenated and fresh, it can also keep your sugar levels in check.

Living with diabetes can be quite the challenge. It requires one to be on the alert, at all times.