Dealing with diabetes daily!
Here are some tips to follow in your daily routine in order to keep up with the pace of your day-to-day active life. Follow this nitty-gritty to manage diabetes in jiffy!
A quick scan
An overall glance at your body as you come out of shower daily will help to identify any body changes. It won’t take more than few minutes. Scan your body from head to toe. Check for soreness, dryness, redness, or itching spots that could get infected. Check areas like underarms, breasts, between legs, and toe, where moisture can hide and breed bacteria. Feet deserve special attention when you are diabetic. You can even take help of mirror to inspect and treat anything that is abnormal. Do not ignore even the smallest of injuries.
Pack your emergency snacks
A packet of candies, glucose tablets and a pack of glucose solution should be permanent inhabitants of your bag. These will help in case blood sugars fall down suddenly. Blood glucose levels below 70 are called low sugars or hypoglycemia. Dizziness, confusion, irritability, or shaky feelings are the warning signs. Skipping a meal, overdose of diabetes medication, and excessive exercise and taking diabetes medicines and not eating can trigger hypoglycemia.
Place shoes at right place
Do not forget to place a pair of sleepers or shoes near the door. This will ensure that you wear them each time you go outside. Avoid the temptation to go outside barefoot. Ensure to keep home slippers handy, and wear them to avoid injury even indoors.
A quick test
Buy a glucose monitor. Place it on your study table or near bed to remind you to check blood sugars in the morning if you are advised fasting glucose monitoring. Prefer dining table if you have to monitor pre and post lunch sugars. Get a plan from your doctor for glucose monitoring.
Label your gym bag
If you exercise daily, you might need to check glucose before and after exercise to know how exercise affects your sugar levels. Put a reminder tag. It will also help people to know that you are diabetic and help quick management in case of hypoglycemia.
Power up food
Eat foods with low glycemic index, i.e. foods, which do not cause a spike in blood glucose. Choose those full of important nutrients. Make a list of such foods before you go shopping, plan daily meals. Stock your refrigerator with healthy foods.
Water up
High glucose levels in blood lead to fluid loss from the body and dryness of skin. This is the reason why skin gets itchy, cracks easily, and gets infected recurrently. Drinking adequate water and other fluids will help skin to stay hydrated, moisturized and supple.
Add movement to life
A regular workout of 30 minutes per day is mandatory to deal with diabetes. Break up exercise sessions if you are not able to workout at a stretch. Alternatively, choose variety of exercises like a morning walk for 10 minutes, a game of tennis in the evening and a leisurely walk after dinner, a lunchtime brisk stroll or walking with the dog in the evening, all counts. Strength training combined with cardio helps to maintain normal blood sugars and decline risk of heart disease.
Fast acting insulin
In today’s fast-paced world, eating schedules can get irregular and unpredictable at times. Rapid-acting insulin can be more useful at such times and can be convenient in addition to current therapy. Ask your doctor about it. Rapid acting insulin is taken right before the meals and act within 30 minutes. So the dose can be changed or timed according to your changing mealtimes.
First aid kit
Poor-healing wounds and injuries are a big challenge in diabetes. Minor cut can turn into a major trouble. Assemble these things together to form a first-aid kit 1. Sterile gauze to clean and cover wounds 2. Hydrogen peroxide for cleaning wounds 3. Antibiotic cream Emergency phone numbers in case of hypoglycemia, neuropathy, or excess bleeding.
