What are the diabetes symptoms that we need to know to avoid having more serious complications? What are the things that we can do to stop the risk of having diabetes? Hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar is common among diabetics. It usually occurs when a diabetic person eats too much, and has too little insulin to regulate their blood sugar. Sometimes stress can cause diabetes. Being aware of the following symptoms and staying alert is essential:

need for frequent urination

drowsiness

nausea

extreme hunger and thirst

blurring of vision

dry, itchy skin

weight loss

dry mouth

If hyperglycemia persist for several hours and leads to dehydration, other symptoms may develo such as:

difficulty in breathing

dizziness upon standing

rapid weight loss

increased drowsiness and confusions

unconsciousness or coma

If the hyperglycemia left untreated, it can lead to a condition called ketoacidosis, also known as diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) or diabetic coma. This can occur when our body has no sufficient insulin to process glucose into fuel, so the body breaks down fats to use for energy. When our body breaks down the fat, the ketones are produced as the by- products. Some of these ketones are eliminated by urine but not all. The ketones will remain in the blood when the patient is rehydrated and adequate insulin is restored. The ketones can cause nausea, headaches, fatigue, or vomiting. Ketoacidosis is a life- threatening and it need immediate treatment. The symptoms includes:

shortness of breath

nausea and vomiting

dry mouth

breath that smells fruity

stomach pain

It is very important to seek for medical care when the hyperglycemia persist for about 2 to 3 days or if the ketones appear in the urine. Generally the people with diabetes need to test their blood level at least four times a day. The urine should be test for the presence of ketones. It is very important to seek for immediate medical care for these conditions:

vomiting

confusions

sleepiness

shortness of breath

dehydration

blood sugar level that stay above 160 mg/dl for longer than a week

glucose readings higher than 300 mg/dl

the presence of ketones in the urine

It is very important to have a regular check up to avoid having this kind of condition. Knowing the diabetes symptoms is one way to decrease the incidence of death because of this.

This question is being asked by millions of people all over the world and their number is increasing every day.

There are 2 types of diabetes. In type 1 there is absolute lack of insulin. This is caused when the beta cells in pancreas, which are responsible for the secretion of insulin, have been destroyed. On the other hand, in type 2 diabetes insulin is being produced but the body is resistant to this hormone.

But, why is insulin such a big problem?

The foods we eat every day contain glucose, which is vital for the body. The thing is that it needs insulin to transport it into the cells. Without it will never enter the cells, but it will remain in the bloodstream and after that it will be excreted in the urine.

Diabetes is not just a minor problem. It can lead to nerve pain, heart attacks, neuropathy and foot problems. High blood sugar can damage the blood vessels in the eyes and result in blurred vision or even blindness. Also, it can cause damage in the kidneys.

It’s very important to do something about it as soon as possible.

Here are a few simple tips you can follow:

  • Lose some weight: the majority of diabetics are overweight. Losing some pounds will help your body regulate blood sugar.
  • Take regular exercise: with exercise you will be able to reduce cholesterol and triglyceride levels and also control blood pressure. This is very important if you want to keep your body healthy.
  • Get a good night’s sleep: studies have shown that people, who sleep less than 8 hours every night, tend to eat more. If you are a diabetic, remaining slim is essential. Also by getting sufficient sleep you will reduce your stress levels.
  • Eat foods high in fiber, such as fruits, vegetables and whole grain breads.
  • Don’t skip meals: the worst thing you can do is to eat one or two large meals every day. Try to eat many small meals, to keep your blood sugar steady throughout the day.
  • Stay away from cakes, cookies and candies. Although there isn’t actually any forbidden food for diabetics, these foods can cause a very rapid increase in the glucose levels. If you can’t banish them from your diet altogether, at least try not to eat them alone. Prefer eating them immediately after meals.
  • Avoid saturated fats, such as cheese and butter.
  • Try to monitor the total amount of carbohydrates you eat every day in order to keep your blood sugar levels in check.
  • You should drink alcohol only occasionally.
  • Brewer’s yeast, broccoli, sage and fenugreek seeds can be very beneficial.

Now Pay Close Attention To This-

Type 2 diabetes is defined by chronic hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar levels and this is the greatest single danger for people with type 2 diabetes. Over time too much sugar in your blood is linked with long term health complications such as kidney failure, heart disease and even blindness.

Listen to Your Body Talk:

Usually before hyperglycemia becomes an acute emergency, you will find yourself feeling really thirsty and urinating more than usual for weeks beforehand. This is your kidney’s way of unloading excess sugar into your urine. Your blood sugar would be around 180 mg/dL (10mmol/L) at this time. If your levels remain high, your body’s cells are likely to become dehydrated.

This is exceedingly rare and the way to avoid this is by regular self-monitoring. Self-management teaches you to control your blood sugar levels… and this control benefits your body and your health.

A Quick Test:

A quick test will tell you if you are hyperglycemic… levels above 150 mg/dL (8.33 mmol/L) indicates a need for better control. You may experience:

  • skin problems
  • feelings of fatigue
  • tingling in various parts of your body, your tongue or fingers
  • trembling hands
  • a tight feeling in your throat
  • headaches and blurred vision, visual spots or double vision
  • buzzing in your ears
  • irritability
  • slowly healing cuts, or sores, or infections
  • unusual hunger
  • insomnia or nightmares

These may appear in clusters or singly.

What to do:

If your levels are high look at:

  • reducing your stress
  • becoming more physically active
  • adjusting your eating pattern to bring your levels back under control
  • drinking extra water to help flush the sugar through your system

If you find your blood sugars remain high and you are not feeling well, call you health care provider or have a family member drive you to the Emergency Room.

Pay attention to what your body is telling you. Don’t ignore your high blood sugar levels. All the long term complications of type 2 diabetes are believed to come about from prolonged periods of high blood sugar or poor blood sugar control.

Blood Sugar Log

Posted by admin in Prescription Diabetes Drugs on February 02nd, 2010

A blood sugar log can be a valuable tool in helping to monitor your levels if you are diabetic. Ask your doctor how often you should check your blood sugar levels. Everyone’s health conditions are different, and your physician will make a recommendation based on your own personal health situation.

You will want to save the readings to keep track of the results in a log. You’ll want to be able to refer back to them to see how much you improve and or change over time.

Logs can be used for either Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, whether you are on oral medication, for example tablets or pills, or if you use insulin injections, or an insulin pump. The log book can help you to scout out “trouble spots” so you can see when is a good time to eat certain foods as well as how different activities and exercise can affect your readings.

Keeping a log is an excellent way to track the effectiveness of your insulin usage and helps to maintain normal blood sugar levels.

In this electronic age where everything seems to be computerized, sometimes it’s nice to fall back on the old fashioned, hand written log book. You can carry it with you to your doctor visits and go over your records with your doctor.

Your log results are very important. Your doctor will use your records to monitor how often your levels are in your target range. This is how your doctor will know if your medicine needs to be adjusted. You should take your log with you to each visit with your doctor.

Keeping track of your sugar levels benefits you in a number of ways.

A. it helps you to treat low or high blood sugar before it becomes critical.

B. it lets you know how exercise and food affect your sugar levels and how much insulin to take if you take insulin.

Make checking your blood sugar level a regular habit and part of your daily routine. And when you check your blood levels use the sides of your finger, not the tips. The tips of your fingers are much more sensitive than the sides.

Type 2 diabetes isn’t the best condition to have, but then it isn’t the worst and what’s more you get to control it. Now you have your diagnosis you realize diabetes isn’t just about lowering your weight… it is also about lowering your blood sugar levels.

Your laboratory blood tests revealed high blood sugar levels and maybe you are wondering why a simple positive result isn’t enough. Now why do you need to self-monitor your blood sugars also?

Take Charge:

You are really the CEO of this deal! You need to take charge of your type 2 diabetes and monitor just how well your medications (if prescribed), eating plan and lifestyle changes… a fancy name for exercise program, are working to help you lower your blood sugar level. Amongst people with type 2 diabetes, its been found self monitoring leads to them having much better control of their blood sugars.

The Groovy or Gory Glucometer:

Which is it to you? Do you see the glucometer as a help, as a way to view your body’s response to the efforts you have been making to overcome your type 2 diabetes? Or do you just see it as a “pain”?

It is actually a clever little device that has only been available in the last thirty years. Until then urine testing was used… this was probably one of the reasons many diabetics had hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia so often.

The glucometer reads the amount of sugar in your bloodstream at a given time and expresses it in milligrams of glucose per deciliter (mg/dL) or millimoles per liter (mmol/L). The US uses mg/dL as the standard measurement for blood glucose, whilst Canada, the UK, Australia and many other countries use mmol/L.

The glucometer provides an instant picture, not an average over a period of time. It gives you your blood sugar reading specific to different times of the day under different circumstances. For example, before your meal which is a fasting reading, or after any meal is postprandial.

The readings are really useful and are used as a diagnostic tool to see whether you are moving from pre-diabetes to type 2 diabetes, or as a reflection of an improvement in your blood sugar levels. Each reading will show you how effective your exercise was or how well you have adjusted your eating plan to help lower your blood sugar level.The readings you get with your glucometer can help you manage your diabetes day by day or even hour by hour… it makes it less difficult for you to control your type 2 diabetes.

Show-off Your Results:

Keep a record of your test results and review it at each visit with your health care provider. When you have lost weight and your blood sugar levels are down to around 84 to 89 mg/dL (4.6 to 4.9 mmol/L), if you are taking anti-diabetic medications, your health care provider may trial you off your drugs.

Keep Your Blood Sugar Levels Normal

Posted by admin in Prescription Diabetes Drugs on November 03rd, 2009

Blood sugar level in medical terms is nothing but the amount of glucose present in a normal person’s blood. It is the essential to all humans as it is the primary energy source to all the organs and cells in our body. But what if the blood sugar level rise high? Does it cause any disorder? The answer for this is a definite yes. This condition where a person experiences higher sugar level is the key symptom of the disease diabetes. Diabetes is one of the common diseases and statistics reveal that more than 16 million Americans suffer from diabetes and over 5.5 million are still not aware of it.

Easy methods to keep your blood sugar level intact

High blood sugar is the main cause to diabetes and hence a proper check at this elementary step can prevent more deadly diseases like heart attacks. Keeping your blood glucose levels normal is not any rocket science. There are lots of simple yet efficient techniques that you could follow to get this done. Exercising regularly is the key to maintain your glucose levels normal. Walking, jogging, cardio exercises would be handy in this respect. Make it a habit to walk atleast for 30 minutes a day and you will feel the difference. The next important factor that influences the blood glucose levels is diet. Proper diet that is free from unwanted saturated fats and carbohydrates can easily bring down your glucose levels. Eat lots of green leafy vegetables as these contain fiber and thus help in regulating sugar levels in blood. Stress and unhealthy life style also results in drastic increase in a person’s blood glucose levels. Yoga and meditation can help you to calm down and lead a stress free life. Good sleep and proper rest are also the essential ingredients that can help you avoid stress and thus keep your glucose levels normal.

The number of diabetics in the U.S. has steadily increased over the past decade. This is mainly due to the increase in the number of obese and overweight individuals. Several hundred individuals die from this disease or from complications that arise from it yearly. Unfortunately, diabetes has no known cure.

The only defense from this disease is prevention. One way of preventing diabetes is by shedding excess weight. Sadly, most weight loss supplements available today are not meant for individuals who are susceptible to diabetes.

A lot of popular weight loss pills contain high amounts of additives such as fructose, which is liable to raise blood sugar levels. High blood sugar levels are an indication of susceptibility to diabetes. This is one reason why there is an increasing demand for all-natural sugar-free supplements.

A few popular weight loss supplements nowadays contain 100% Acai extract from the Acai berry. Acai is naturally sugar-free. The sweet taste comes naturally from the fruit’s pulp. This way you can get all the health and weight loss benefits of a great supplement, without adding to the risk of diabetes.

Many people are concerned about the effects of food supplements to their health. Acai berry products make for great alternatives since they contain none of the risks most people are avoiding. Acai berry also has an added advantage over other supplements since it contains natural antioxidants that enhance immunity against ailments such as cancer and heart disease.

So if you’re diabetic and need to lose weight, Acai supplements may be worth a try.

Many people are very much afraid of their diabetic condition, not knowing of how to beat diabetes. It is true that some people are counting the days with over imagination of diabetes as life threatening. This is because of their poor knowledge about diabetes. If they know exactly what causes diabetes, they can easily manage the ailment without suffering much. There is no basis in their fear because there are many other diseases which are really dreadful of keeping a person on bed for long years in life. Can you say it is so with diabetes too The answer for this question is ‘No’. Even at an extreme level of increased high blood sugar, there is no high risk if proper treatment is given to control blood sugar. Since there are home remedies to cure diabetes, and special clinics to give specialized treatments, you need not lose your hopes to live long.

Why should a diabetic lose hopes and peace of mind Diabetes can be easily managed by controlling blood glucose within limits. It will not claim the life of a patient all of a sudden. Nowadays, awareness has been created among the people to prevent diabetes. The mostly needed things are to recognize the early symptoms of diabetes and consult the doctor to start preliminary treatment. The doctor carefully diagnoses the disease and decides the prescription of medicines to go well with the body type of the diabetic.

Here is the emphasis for a change of lifestyle you have been following so far. It can be the only solution for beating your diabetes with no risk and no expense of money. A person chooses to change his lifestyle means he keeps off unhealthy foods and other associated habits. The easy tips that you can follow are delivered here.

You should know that the basic reason for the onset of diabetes is the non-secretion of insulin in the pancreas. Sometimes, it may be an insufficiency in the secretion of this hormone. The third possibility is with the insulin not potent enough to convert the glucose in the blood into energy. If you find a solution to set right this defect, then you can be sure of beating diabetes. You can take control by eating only that much you need. The best solution is the changing of your lifestyle as follows:

1. Consult a dietitian to choose the right diabetic diet foods.

2. Have a busy life in general with some exercise routine.

3. Avoid stressful situations in your daily activities.

4. Avoid over loading of your stomach with starchy foods.

5. Have divided servings of meal instead of a loaded portion.

6. Eat fresh vegetables and fruits low in sweet content.

7. Choose high fiber and low carb diet foods avoiding fatty items.

« Older Posts