Diabetes is one ailment that needs to be taken seriously as it can affect your vital organs. Adhering to a plan to fight diabetes calls for 24-hour commitment. Considering the risks posed by diabetes, the effort you put in is worth it. This article brings you 10 tips that can help you prevent diabetes. Preventing the diseases assumes greater significance if your risk of having it is higher. Such a risk arises if you’re overweight or there’s a family history of the disease.
It’s never too late to start your mission of preventing diabetes. The most basic steps that you take, like losing weight, eating healthy, or exercising regularly can go a long way in helping you prevent diabetes. You can prevent serious damage to your heart or kidneys by making just a few simple changes in your daily lifestyle. While staying lean and being active is the mantra, these 10 tips can greatly help you prevent diabetes.
1. Be More Active
Regular physical activity can benefit your health immensely. An active lifestyle can help you,
- Lose extra weight
- Check blood sugar
- Boost insulin sensitivity helping keep your blood sugar level under check
While research has shown that both aerobics and resistance training helps control diabetes, a fitness program combining both gives the best results.
2. Stop Smoking
Smoking leaves you greatly vulnerable to diabetes and the many complications that come with it. These complications are-
- Infections, ulcers, and amputations caused a reduced flow of blood in the legs and feet
- Heart ailments
- Damage to the nerves
- Early death
- Kidney ailments
- Stroke
- Damage to the eyes may even cause blindness
Do consult your doctor for advice and guidance on how you can stop yourself from smoking or using tobacco in other forms.
3. Consume Lots of Fiber
Fiber helps a great deal in-
- Improving the control of your blood sugar thereby reducing the risk of diabetes
- Preventing heart diseases
- Prevent you from getting overweight by helping you feel full with just modest helpings of food
Fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and whole grains have a high content of fiber.
4. Keep Your Blood Pressure and Cholesterol under Check
High blood pressure like diabetes may cause serious damage to your blood vessels. The damage that can be caused by cholesterol is quite often more severe and rapid if you have diabetes. These conditions may combine and emerge as a grave threat that may trigger a heart attack or a stroke or cause other life-threatening situations.
Healthy eating while sticking to a low-fat diet coupled with regular exercise can help control blood pressure and cholesterol greatly. You might also have to take medicines as prescribed by your doctor should the need arise.
5. Consume Whole Grains
While it’s not clear how consuming whole grains may reduce the risk of you having diabetes also helping control your blood sugar levels. It’s advisable that at least half of the grains you take be whole grains.
There are many foods prepared with whole grain as an ingredient, like pasta, various bread, and cereals. You should search for the word ‘whole’ while checking the list of ingredients on packaged food.
Here is the complete diet chart for Diabetes that one can follow.
6. Go for Regular Diabetes Tests
Get yourself checked for diabetes two to four times a year. This should be done regularly apart from the regular general checkups and routine eye exams.
When you have a general checkup done, your doctor checks your nutrition and enquires about your activity levels. He shall look for any kidney damage, heart ailments, or any damage to the nerves; all that are signs of diabetes. Your eye doctor shall be vigilant about any damage to the retina, cataracts, or glaucoma. Such regular checkups that can detect early signs of diabetes go a long way in preventing the disease.
7. Avoid Fad Diets and Opt for Healthier Choices
Diets that are low on carbohydrates, the glycemic index diet, or other such fad diets may show positive results initially helping you lose weight. However, it’s still not clear how much they can help prevent diabetes and the long-term effects that come with it. Besides, strictly keeping yourself limited to a particular food group may result in you missing out on essential nutrients. You should rather opt for variety in your diet while taking modest quantities of food.
8. Consume Alcohol Responsibly
Depending on the quantity of alcohol you take and whether you eat while taking it, alcohol is known to cause high or low blood sugar. If you are a regular drinker, keep your alcohol intake modest. We recommend a single drink each day for women of all ages and men above the age of 65 and two drinks each day at the most for men below 65.
Do include the calories that you take in with the drink in your daily calorie count and be sure to take your drink with a meal or a snack. We should caution you that consumption of alcohol can cause low blood sugar levels especially in those who take insulin.
9. Take an Aspirin Daily
Your doctor may recommend an aspirin every day if you suffer from diabetes and are vulnerable to other cardiovascular risk factors like high blood pressure. Aspirin helps thin the blood helping in smoother blood flow through the veins.That helps lower the risks of a heart attack. A daily dose of aspirin should be considered on doctor’s advice in high-risk patients with-
- Heart diseases being a part of the family history
- A habit of smoking
- Hypertension
- Urine having a positive protein content
- High cholesterol
Do consult your doctor about the daily dosage that should suit you.
10. Be Serious about Tackling Stress
There’s a tendency in patients to neglect their regular diabetes care regime when they are stressed. You should set limits to keep your stress under check and prioritize the tasks to perform. Such a list of priorities will help you plan your daily routine and ensure that you tackle work that needs immediate attention first. With the most pressing commitment out of the way, your stress is greatly reduced. Also, do learn relaxation techniques. Staying positive is a must. Do get plenty of sleep too. Stress is not only a threat to patients with diabetes, it causes severe harm to anyone and everyone suffering from it. Meditation and yoga are effective techniques to tackle stress.
Conclusion
Diabetes care requires you to stay relaxed and focused. You can have things in control by following the 10 Tips to Prevent Diabetes we have shared with you. Diabetes should never prevent you from having a healthy and happy life if you are keen to do your bit. Regular consultations with the doctor after the age of 45 are desirable. Do take your doctor’s help in fighting diabetes. Putting a lid on consuming alcohol is a must. Make sure that you do your best to quit smoking altogether. Not only is smoking very harmful to those with diabetes, it causes cancer too. Quit consuming tobacco in other forms too. Staying positive is the key to fighting diabetes. Don’t let gloom overcome you and stay positive.