How best to manage diabetes type 2?

I suffer from diabetes mellitus type 2 myself and is within my blood relatives, so is hereditary for me. I was diagnosed at the age of 38 years old by my doctor.

The way to manage and even better, if you can reverse this debilitating very serious physical illness that can also affect your good mental performance is to take the prescribed medications your GP gives you, eat a low GI wholegrain diet, plenty of exercise of any nature and regularly check your blood sugars via a machine as shown in the image above.

What is diabetes one may ask? It's an inactive amount of a hormone known as insulin produced by your pancreas and causes high blood sugars which can be dangerous, if not well managed. When this medical condition is poorly managed a long series of complications can occur, which can range from as follows;

Vision impairment and blindness in both eyes.

Heart attacks.

Amputation of limbs.

Kidney failure and dialysis.

Strokes.

Damage to the central nervous system, leading to pain and weakness.

Peripheral vascular disease, a condition where blood flow is reduced to the limbs.

Thrush is quite common in diabetics too.

High blood sugars affects our hypoglycaemic levels and therefore poor physical and mental health performance is directly affected. Eating the right amount of carbohydrates are essential building blocks in maintaining normal blood sugar levels which you must work closely with your specialist diabetic nurse/consultant with if you are unfortunately a diabetic. It is an epidemic in all the Western countries mainly to do with poor lifestyle choices, poor diets and being morbidly obese.

From my own personal experiences of which food choices helps me lower blood sugars are;

Blueberries.

Edaname beans.

Sweet potatoes.

Quinoa.

Legumes.

Low-fat milk.

Leafy green vegetables.

Non-starchy vegetables.

A range of nuts and seeds.

Lean meats.

Lean poultry.

Fish and shellfish.

Wholegrains produce.

Improving cholesterol levels also prevents diabetic complications, via portion control. Eating a healthy balanced wholegrain diet you tend to find eating smaller portions fills you up and releases energy to last you for at least 6 hours before you need to eat another thing. But doctors recommend diabetics eat healthy choices of food little, but often to keep a good balance of blood sugars within its normal range which is meant to be between 5 - 8 when you test it on your blood glucose monitoring machine.

Speaking from experience, the most accurate reading is first thing in the morning before you eat or drink a drop of anything and you keep a written record of your blood sugar levels in a diabetic record booklet your GP normally gives you on the NHS for free.

Doctors recommend all diabetics to drink plenty of water during their every waking hour of each day to keep hydrated and is also a natural way of lowering blood sugar levels. I know most of us don't do that and tend to drink caffeinated hot and cold drinks all day, everyday more than just plain old filtered clean water. Even I must admit I ought to do more off and maintain a regular exercise routine. I am at the moment planning on taking up different types of yoga and after trying them out, to find which type suits me the best, because I have painful arthritic joints which restricts me to carry out strenuous kinds of exercises I can't maintain long-term.

My diet is good but, I just need to incorporate into my daily routine motivating myself to exercise more often outdoors. I am only slightly overweight by only half a stone, so I just need to exercise more often to be able to lose that little bit of this weight and weekly non-strenuous exercise classes tends to motivate me to want to do workouts, as I can then network with other like-minded people. It gives me another reason to try out different types of yoga classes and whenever I venture outdoors, I tend to brisk walk (walking faster than most). I suppose that has been preventing me from becoming morbidly obese as well as, my well balanced healthy low GI diet. A liquid fasting diet of 800 calories would not suit me, in fact it would leave me starving hungry everyday and make me into a very unhealthy weight of an anorexic which would be another story to write about separate from diabetes.

Diabetics do not have to cut out all sugars out of their diets, they can use the alternative which is most natural form of sweeteners that is naturally present in our bodies, which is xylitol granulated sugar and this is the only sweetener that doesn't affect blood sugar levels. It is also naturally occurring in the fruit and vegetables we eat. I tend to use it to bake cakes and pastries with. Sometimes, I use it in my hot milky caffeinated drinks depending on, if I have a sweet tooth at the time.

With regular exercises my doctor told me last week, that I could probably put my diabetes into remission, only if I can maintain my blood sugars within its normal range for quite a long period of time. Rather than suffering from this debilitating serious illness for the rest of my life, I much rather do what it takes to reverse this and I will not have to take no medication for it ever again. It is all about stimulating the pancreas to produce enough of the hormone known as insulin, which purpose is to keep blood sugars lowered within normal levels all the time.