Keeping track of blood sugar levels is essential to diabetes management. It is simply impossible to treat… or prevent… hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia and to evaluate the effectiveness of your prescribed medication and eating plan, if you don’t know your blood sugars. For well-controlled diabetics, it may be OK to take blood sugar levels just once a week. For diabetics including type 2’s on insulin, and for anyone who has type 2 diabetes together with an infection such as a cold or flu, it may be necessary to check these sugar levels literally ten times a day.

Blood sugar levels, however, don’t tell diabetics everything they need to know about diabetes control. Here are some additional, essential measurement tools that should be in every diabetic’s medicine cabinet.

Bath thermometer: Especially if you have been diabetic for 10 years or more, diabetes can cause impaired sensation in your hands or feet. Countless diabetics scald themselves without even knowing it.

A bath thermometer can literally save a limb, especially if you have poor circulation. Bath thermometers are available through most drugstores, although they may have to order them for you.

Clinistix or Diastix: If want to know if a “sugar-free” food is really sugar-free, test with Clinistix or Diastix. Put a tiny amount of the food into your mouth and mix with saliva. Then spit the food and saliva onto the test strip.

Any color change indicates starch or sugar. Many diabetics are surprised to learn that bouillon, ketchup, “sugar-free” cookies, and countless other supposedly sugar-free foods are actually loaded with sugar.

These test strips can also tell you if your blood sugar levels are so high that sugar is spilling over into your urine… just hold the strip in your urine stream and look for a change in color. Since your kidneys don’t remove glucose from the bloodstream until blood sugars reach 250mg/dL (14mmol/L) or greater, any reaction of the test strip indicates a need for better diabetes control. Clinistix or Diastix are also available at drugstores.

Ketostix: Ketostix show color changes that measure ketones in the urine. Ketones, which are produced when your body can’t or doesn’t use glucose for fuel, signals that you are in danger of the most serious complication of uncontrolled high blood sugars, dehydration.

If you feel sick and aren’t eating, your body will use stored fat for energy and produce “moderate” levels of ketones. If you have some other diabetic issue and your blood sugar levels are also running very, very high, then you are likely to have “high” levels of ketones.

Taking aspirin can cause false positives when you use Ketostix, so you don’t need to call your doctor unless you have both high ketone levels and high blood sugar levels. Any color change in Ketostix indicating high ketone levels, however, combined with blood sugars over 200mg/dL (11mmol/L) is a sign you need to see your doctor.

Research indicates fiber slows your digestion and keeps blood sugars from rising quickly after a meal. Now this effect is so powerful it can actually lower your overall blood sugar levels. Because it slows digestion it also helps you to feel full for a much longer period:

• fiber adds bulk so you will feel full without added calories or kilojoules
• soluble fiber can lower your total serum cholesterol level and your LDL cholesterol (bad) level
• a high-fiber eating plan makes problems such as hemorrhoids, which is common in people with type 2 diabetes, less likely

There are two types of fiber: insoluble fiber which doesn’t dissolve in water and adds bulk to your intestinal tract. And there is soluble fiber, which is particularly important if you have type 2 diabetes.

Soluble fiber helps regulate your blood sugars, and has been reported to:

• lower post-prandial blood sugars
• lower the amount of glucose in your urine
• lower your insulin requirements and increase insulin sensitivity

Fiber fills your stomach and slows the release of digested foods from your stomach into your intestines. This actually slows down the release of sugar into your bloodstream and gives your pancreas more time to make insulin to keep your blood sugar levels low.

One study revealed that a high-fiber eating plan reduced the amount of insulin needed by 75% of the type 2 diabetics in this group, and some of the other type 2 diabetics in this group were able to give insulin away altogether.

It is soluble fiber in particular that lowers the potential increase in your blood triglycerides and other blood fats that are often seen in many diabetics who eat a high-carbohydrate diet.

So how much total fiber would you need to eat in a 24-hour period… a daily dose of between 25 to 35 grams. This will help accomplish lower blood sugar levels following your meals, and to a lesser extent, your wake-up blood sugar level.

Here are a few simple ways to add fiber to your eating plan:

• eat more fresh fruits and vegetables… at least five servings per day is recommended. Seven is even better
• cook vegetables with their skin on whenever possible, and eat the skin
• chose whole grain bread and whole grain cereals instead of products made with refined flour
• add unprocessed bran, wheat germ or oat bran to foods such as salads and hot cereals
• drink at least eight large glasses of water each day. Water helps you to use bran effectively.

Dr David Jenkins, the developer of the glycemic index chart, found that diabetics who consumed between 14 to 26 grams of guar gum soluble fiber, (which can be eaten as a bean), required less insulin and had better control of their blood sugar levels.

In addition to the many foods which contribute significant amounts of soluble fiber to the diabetic eating plan, nutrition supplements found in your Health Food Store include:

• guar gum
• oat gum
• pea fiber
• pectin, and
• psyllium

Most people seem to adjust to the additional fiber added to their eating plan in about six weeks… don’t forget to drink plenty of water though as soluble fiber, especially, absorbs lots of water.

Diabetes mellitus classification

It has two categories, they are:

• diabetes 1 and
• diabetes 2

Type 2 has two other sub types, they are:

• gestational and
• pre-diabetes

“Diabetes 1″ is also being called as childhood-onset, juvenile, and insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM). Likewise, “diabetes 2″ is also being called as adult-onset, obesity-related, and non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM).

Diabetes 1

It is characterized by loss of the insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas which leads to insulin deficiency. The majority of type 1 is of beta cell loss by autoimmune attack. There is no known preventive measure against type 1, which causes approximately 10% of cases. It can affect children or adults but was previously termed “juvenile or childhood-onset diabetes” because it represents a majority of the cases in children.

Diabetes 2

It is characterized by insulin resistance which may be combined with relatively reduced insulin secretion. The improper utilization or sensitivity of body tissues to insulin is believed to involve the insulin receptor. However, the specific defects are not known, but excess fat deposits in the muscle cell are assumed to be the cause. It is the most common one.

In the early stages, the abnormality in insulin sensitivity can be overcome by medication that improve insulin sensitivity or reduce the production of glucose by liver. As the disease progresses, due to low level of insulin secretion a therapeutic replacement of insulin often becomes necessary.

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM)

It is a sub class of type 2, involving a combination of relatively inadequate insulin secretion and insulin sensitivity. It occurs in about 2%-5% of all pregnancies and mostly it will disappear after delivery. About 20%-50% of all gestational women develop type 2 later in their lives. Even though it may be transient, untreated gestational can cause health issues for both the fetus and mother. Risks to the baby include high birth weight and breathing difficulties after delivery.

Pre-diabetes

It indicates a condition that occurs when a person’s blood glucose level is higher than normal but not high enough to diagnose as diabetes 2. Many people diagnosed as 2 may spend many years in a state of pre-diabetes.