Receiving a diagnosis of diabetes can be overwhelming and scary. If you don’t know much about the illness, you may feel that your life is “over,” and that nothing will ever be the same. And while it may be true that things will change, there are people all over the world with diabetes, who live happy, healthy lives every day.

The biggest key to managing diabetes is to understand the illness and how it affects you. In order to do that, you need to make sure you do research into diabetes. Specifically, make sure you learn about the type of diabetes you have. There are variations to the disease, and each variation is treated and managed differently. Knowing about your diabetes is the first step to a successful life.

Just as important as knowing what, exactly, your illness is doing to your body is following your healthcare provider’s instructions for your life. Some cases of diabetes require very specialized care, and it’s important for you to follow everything your doctor tells you in order to stay healthy. He or she wouldn’t give you the instructions unless they were important, so you can’t “pick and choose” which parts of your care you’re going to follow. If an aspect of your treatment isn’t clear, make sure you ask. With this type of illness, it’s much better to be safe than sorry!

Another way to help yourself in dealing with diabetes is to discuss all your options with your healthcare provider. You may be on a specific treatment plan, but if something isn’t working for you, there may be other options. For example, if you need to take insulin every day, you and your doctor may agree that an insulin pump is a viable option for your lifestyle. Or if your exercise routine is too strenuous, your doctor will be able to suggest alternatives to make sure you get the exercise you need without pushing yourself too hard.

Finally, it’s important to remember that even though you’re the one that received the diagnosis of diabetes, this illness is something that impacts your family, as well. It’s important that your close friends and family know about your condition, what you’re doing to manage it, and how they can help. Keep them informed, and don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it. Your health is the most important thing, and friends and family can make an excellent support system to help ensure that your health is the foremost on your mind.

While diabetes is a serious illness, it’s one that can be treated and managed successfully in your life. You can still do many, if not all, of the things you want to do, and your disease doesn’t have to control you.

Diabetes risk has long been an issue worth studying. After all, we all want a lower risk to develop this condition and we work hard at doing so. We gave up eating the beloved chips although every once in a while we visit the grocery aisles where they reside in splendor. We exercise although we have become such clock watchers impatient to see that thirty minutes is up.

Yet when it comes to the connection of diabetes risk to sleep, that’s where we miss out on our list of priorities. Why is that? And what is the evidence to prove that it has ranked lower in our totem pole of needs? You may need to sit down for the following statistics.

Surveys have shown that the average sleep has gone down from the 1960 figure of 8 to 8.9 hours to 7 hours in 1995 and by 2004 the National Center for Health Statistics reported that one third of us had only less than 6 hours of sleep. Is that evidence enough for you?

As to the question of why this is so, it is easy to understand that there does not seem any commercial value to promote longer sleep. Besides the fact that while we are sleep, we are not really stimulating the economy. So, is there something we can do about this?

No, we did not really do too much about this at least not until after we were jolted into awakening when the connection between diabetes risk and sleep was released by a study. It looks like that how long we sleep affects the diabetes risk.

James E. Gangwisch, PhD studied the relationship between the duration of sleep and diabetes for eight to ten years from 1982 and 1992. There were 8992 participants who were between 32 and 86 years old. He noted in other studies that inadequate sleep is tied to a higher incidence of diabetes.

It is believed that eating in an unhealthy manner and getting less physical activity are the factors that contribute to diabetes but now another one feature of the modern lifestyle has come into focus as a contributor also. And this is the short sleep period.

The results of this study from Columbia University in New York reveals that participants who have five or less hours of sleep and those who sleep for nine hours or more are more likely to have diabetes than those who sleep for seven hours.

The short sleep period’s effect on diabetes is likely partly related to its influence on hypertension and body weight. Studies have shown that deprived sleep lowers glucose tolerance and compromise the sensitivity of insulin. The pancreas will become overworked and this leads to type 2 diabetes.

It follows then that if sleep deprivation raises resistance to insulin and lowers glucose tolerance then if the quality of sleep is improved, this could become a form of treatment to prevent diabetes. So let us all listen up and get enough sleep, shall we?

Regarding long sleep period, it is not known how it contributes to diabetes. The medical director of Sleep Health Centers, Lawrence Epstein, MD, who is also an instructor at Harvard Medical School said that this study is one of those that have revealed that people with less sleep have higher risk of developing diabetes. Now you have an idea as to the connection between sleep and diabetes risk.

Type II Diabetes is a condition where the body is deficient in producing insulin, either it can’t produce enough or the insulin it does produce doesn’t work properly. This means the glucose levels in the blood can’t be controlled and there is the potential for them to become too concentrated.

Traditionally Type II Diabetes was an illness that affected the older generation but more and more young people are discovering they have the disease. Experts believe this is due to higher obesity levels and lower activity levels throughout the UK.

So can lifestyle make a difference?

A healthier lifestyle can definitely deter the onset of Type II Diabetes in the first place. The risk factors are age, ethnicity (those of an Asian or Afro-Caribbean origin are more likely to contract Type II Diabetes), inactivity and obesity or being overweight. While you can’t do anything about the first two risk factors, you can make a massive difference by watching your weight, particularly excess fat around your middle, and taking regular exercise.

But what if you have already been diagnosed with Type II Diabetes?

Many nutritional therapists believe that Type II Diabetes can be reversed by following a healthy low-GL (Glycaemic Load) diet, ensuring your weight is within the normal range, and taking regular exercise. By only eating meals that release sugar into your blood stream slowly and gradually, you put less pressure on the pancreas to produce insulin. In the short term, your body can cope with less efficient insulin because there is also a lesser need. And over time, this allows the body’s production of insulin to improve.

The key to a low-GL lifestyle is always eating protein (which has no immediate effect on blood sugar) with carbohydrate and for all your starchy foods sticking to whole grains - bread, pasta, rice etc. Eat as many vegetables as you like but stick to raw or steamed. Fruit is also good, but be careful - choose apples, pears and berries over banana’s or grapes. And dried fruit might be rich in certain vitamins and antioxidants, but it is also very high in sugar. And don’t think ‘fat free’ think ’saturated fat free’. The Omega 3 & 6 essential fatty acids are very important for your body, and have the added benefit of filling you up without affecting your blood sugar.

Of course if you suffer from Type II Diabetes it is very important that your blood sugar levels are monitored regularly by a health professional and in some cases medication might be required. But there is a strong feeling that lifestyle is the overriding factor in tackling the disease head on.