Regardless of whether you have type 1 or type 2 diabetes, it is important that you now realize that you have a problem in your hands, you have an illness to take care of and if you do not do anything about it and keep the same lifestyle that you have been having up until today, you can pretty much kiss your life goodbye! Yes, I know these are harsh words and at more than one person may even get upset about it, but when it comes to diabetes the truth can be very upsetting and that is that if you do not take care of your body now that you know if your condition consequences can be dire.

After you have been diagnosed with diabetes you will get several medications as well testing supplies so you can be on top of your health condition at all times. However, the best medication doesn’t cost a thing and it’s something that you should’ve been doing in the first place, such medication/treatment is called exercise.

Diabetics don’t like to hear about the “E” word because it implies physical activity, movement, sweating and some might not be comfortable about the whole idea but exercise is just part of your treatment and you need to get used to be a deity you need to move around and keep your body not only in shape but healthy if you want to be around for those important moments in life such as your children graduation, their wedding and such.

Exercise it doesn’t necessarily have to involve weight lifting or running for hours at the local gym, in fact you can start with very small changes around your house that will also count as an exercise as much as weight lifting at the gym do. For instance:

1. Try to vacuum four times per week, even if your house is not that dirty. Vacuuming can be a great exercise that will help you move around, sweat a little and achieve your main goal which is to remain healthy and keep your diabetes and check.

2. Walk, walk, walk and then walk some more. Lots of people often come up with very ingenious excuses about the many reasons they have for not walking, maybe it is raining, maybe they work a lot of hours and don’t have enough time throughout the day to walk, well you need to get over those excuses and find or better yet make some time throughout your busy day so you can dedicate at least five to 10 minutes to this exercise.

3. Go to your local mall and walk around.

4. Whenever you go out shopping try to make many trips from the car to your house instead of making just one trip with all the things you have purchased.

5. Play around with your kids, pets or try to get yourself a workout buddy that can encourage you to reach your goals.

Article Author: Phillip Adams-Wright

Diabetes is insulin resistance or deficiency that deprives your other cells of the much needed metabolic nutrients that your body requires. As a result of the lost nutrients the body can develop complications such as stroke, hypertension, heart attacks and even blindness.

Do not let this happen to you. There is a solution and it starts today and the answer is diabetic diet, exercise and taking your medications as prescribed by your physician. If you will make these changes then you can possibly reverse this disease and avoid the complications.

Changing your diet is the most effective treatment for diabetes that is known. You are in complete control of what you eat and how much you eat. This is a topic that cannot be ignored. You must eat the foods that are recommended for diabetics because these are the foods that will stop your diabetes. The foods that are recommended will normalize our blood sugar. Make small changes in your diet such as eating whole grain bread instead of the processed white bread, or eat a piece of fruit instead of the cookies for snack. Think about the amount of unhealthy fat in your food intake. You want to lower your danger of stroke therefore you will need to lower the volume in your eating habits. Eat dietary items that are baked or broiled, not fried. Remove the skin of the chicken. Pass on rich gravy. Select healthy fats like avocado oil.

If you make several of these changes now then you have begun to manage your diabetes. Concentrate on your diet and exercise and the weight will fall off and you will feel young and healthy again

Article Author: B. Turner

Sometimes we just take it for granted when we have an instance of blurred vision. Being very busy as we are, we tend to dismiss such episode as maybe due to eye strain arising from spending too much time in front of the television or the computer. For adults, one should not rule out the emergence of diabetes when confronted with this episode. Diabetes is a very common but grave metabolic disorder that people generally take very lightly.

Many people who take diabetes lightly are not aware of the complications that diabetes can cause to a person. If you study carefully the complications, you will find that damage to the blood vessel is the main starting point for the complications. As the complications involve various important organs, people tend to equate these with the specific organs but actually it mainly involves the blood vessel. If diabetes is not properly controlled, gradually it will damage the eyes, kidneys, heart and the limbs. Aside the damage to the blood vessels, diabetes can also cause havoc to the nerves.

The diabetic complication that involves vision initially presents itself as blurred vision. This is a critical stage because the high blood sugar levels will cause the fluid to be drawn out from the eye cells. When this happens, the lenses will be affected and thus vision becomes blurred,.

With further attack by diabetes, the blood vessels nourishing the retina becomes affected. When you have a long term damage to these blood vessels, diabetic retinopathy develops resulting in blindness. In such cases about 2% of the people inflicted become blind after 15years of diabetes while about 10% of these diabetics live with severe visual impairment.

It is thus very critical for everyone to be aware of the complications of diabetes, and an early detection and control of this metabolic disorder will save lives.

Article Author: Mohamad Ali

My great aunt used to “manage” her diabetes by scraping off the frosting before treating herself to a piece of cake. She and her husband held a deep distrust of their doctor, and, living in a rural area, did not have many options for seeking care. Needless to say, Aunt Maude did not live out her twilight years as comfortably as she might have.

Today’s seniors have a lot more options for diabetes management. There is a wealth of information available online, some of it more trustworthy than others. Nonetheless, careful research can help make living with diabetes more comfortable and easy. Additionally, there are a number of tools available to help manage and monitor one’s diabetic condition at home. Whether you trust those “darn doctors” or not, it is always important to be under the care of a physician, but daily monitoring of glucose levels can be handled quite easily.

Glucose monitors are readily available, as well as inexpensive. It’s important to know one’s blood glucose level and check it regularly. Seniors run a greater risk for reactions to low blood sugar (hypoglycemia). Another monitor that’s handy to have at home is one for checking blood pressure. Although more expensive than monitoring glucose, this, too, is important, because high blood pressure can lead to heart disease, the number one cause of death for people with diabetes.

Results from this at-home monitoring help doctors treat diabetics more effectively. Medications are important, but the levels can be reduced through higher degrees of exercise and more care with one’s diet. Even those for whom “diet” is a dirty word can find tasty diabetic recipes online or in special cookbooks. Working regular exercise into the day, even something as simple as a morning walk, actually becomes more important in overall health as one ages. Making better choices in life management can lead to a happy, long life, frequently free from the complications associated with diabetes.

Playing an active role in planning healthy living for those with diabetes is particularly important for seniors. Rather than feeling betrayed by an aging body that no longer functions as desired, a senior can be proud of strides made through exercise and diet control. Following simple rules for medication, exercise, and nutrition for diabetics can make a senior’s golden years richly rewarding, much more so than just feeling noble for scraping off the frosting.

Article Author: Elle Wood

A good friend and a cousin were recently diagnosed with diabetes Both had been treated for prediabetes over the last few years but neither took it too seriously and did not stay with the regimen that was needed. For example, instead of losing weight they both gained weight.

Diabetes is an insidious diseases but all of us can take steps to prevent this disease and help others prevent it also. Yes, it can be controlled with medication. Yes, the symptoms do not cramp your lifestyle enough that you cannot function as you usually do.

On the other hand, over time it is devastating to your organs. A simple way to explain it is that your organs (heart, liver and kidneys especially) have to work very hard when you have diabetes and they tend to wear out faster then normally as you get older. The results are often debilitating in later years and your quality of life is severely reduced as you age. It also shortens your life span.To properly understand diabetes you need to understand how the body normally processes glucose.

Glucose is the main energy source, the fuel, for the cells that make up your muscles and tissues. If you have diabetes, you have too much glucose in your blood which leads to problems. Glucose comes from the food you eat and from your liver. During digestion, glucose is absorbed into your blood stream. At the same time your pancreas also secretes insulin into the bloodstream. As the insulin circulates it is allowed to enter your cells, reducing the amount that’s left in your bloodstream. When the amount of blood glucose level drops so does the secretion of insulin from your pancreas.

Your liver stores any extra glucose, now called glycogen, just in case your cells need it later. When your insulin levels are low because you haven’t eaten in a while, your liver releases the stored glucose into the bloodstream to keep your glucose level normal.

When you have diabetes instead of entering your cells, the glucose builds up in your bloodstream and some is eventually excreted in your urine. Which is why your urine is always test when you go to a physician. This happens because your pancreas is not producing enough insulin or your cells are not responding to insulin or both,

These are symptoms of prediabetes, when your blood sugar level is higher than normal but not high enough to be classified as type 2 diabetes. The medical term for this is diabetes mellitus, the Latin term meaning honey sweet which refers to the excess sugar in your blood and urine.

People often think of diabetes as one disease. The fact is glucose, which comes from the foods you eat and also is made by your liver, can build up in your body for different reasons.

Type 1 diabetes develops when your pancreas makes little if any of the hormone insulin. Without insulin circulating in your bloodstream, glucose can’t get into the cells in your muscles and tissues so it builds up in your blood. In the meantime, your liver makes more glucose and also releases it in your bloodstream which increases your blood glucose.

Type 1 diabetes used to be called insulin-dependent diabetes or juvenile diabetes. That is because the disease most often develops when you’re a child or a teen and daily injections are required to make up for the insulin your body doesn’t produce. Today we know that adults can sometimes also develop type 1 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes is the more common form. It makes up close to 95 percent of people over age 20 that have the disease. This type used to be called adult-onset diabetes. Another name is noninsulin-dependent diabetes. This term isn’t accurate anymore either because children and teens are now developing type 2 diabetes. One of the major reasons for this is childhood obesity.

In the mean time, consider one of the complications of diabetes: Diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness among adults, ages 20 to 74 years old.

Article Author: Ruthan Brodsky