Dealing with Diabetes
Dealing with diabetes brings a host of challenges. Emotional, psychological, and physical adjustments are needed in order to successfully deal with diabetes.
If not controlled, diabetes can damage the eyes, the kidneys, and other essential organs. Diabetes can reduce kidney function. It can cause vision changes and other health problems. Fortunately, you can choose to control this damage by changing your diet and exercise habits and by taking medicine if need be.
Dealing with diabetes, involves more than making physical changes. The emotional adjustments needed cannot be easily described or measured.
Stress from being concerned about those effects can be both cause and consequence. Stress weakens the immune system, which in turn reduces the body’s ability to ward off infection, colds and so forth. Those are just some of the possible complications of diabetes. But those in turn may lead to additional stress as the ability to function is reduced. A vicious cycle is established.
Using a wide-range of diabetic management techniques is necessary to break the stressful cycle of worry and infection. First, the person must manage his or her overall health in order to avoid infection. Secondly, and more importantly, the diabetic must learn to cultivate a positive attitude which will reduce both worry and the chance of infection.
That’s not easy. Accepting that management of diabetes and its effects is a long term, often a lifetime, proposition is the first step.
Careful monitoring of blood glucose levels is a basic and essential factor. Controlling that level - by diet, exercise, and (if necessary) medications - is vital. That helps reduce the physical strain on body systems. That helps reduce the worry. Monitoring and management will need to become a daily routine, as common as brushing your teeth.
Knowledge can help motivate the patient to engage in that practice. Being fully aware of the possible complications, and the near certainty of having them if inaction is the choice made, can provide an incentive to take action. Knowing what your body will do can help you control both the potentially harmful physical effects and your attitude about them.
Once you are informed, put your knowledge to action. Make a firm commitment to manage your diabetes. While this take patience and courage, you are up to the challenge.
You will not be overwhelmed by the need to make changes, if you begin making a few changes gradually. Commit to walking ten minutes a day every other day. Make changes in your diet, one change at a time. After a short while you will feel like doing daily exercise and trying more challenging exercises.
As you conquer those small hills a little bit at a time, you gain the confidence that you can tackle larger ones and over a lifetime. In time, managing diabetes for most people becomes a routine little more difficult than doing an average school or work assignment. It becomes a few more things on the list of daily challenges to meet and solve in order to get those daily rewards.
