by David Smith

Created on: September 06, 2009

I have been dealing with diabetes since I was a young child because my Grandmother and my mother were both diabetic. As a result of this, I learned early on how to control this disease and, more importantly, how to lose control and let the disease win. Most people that don't know about how to control the disease can see the disease as a death sentence, but once you learn how to control the disease, the more you will understand that it is not a death sentence. I watched this disease claim my Grandmother at age 56, and I watched it claim my mother at age 54. As a result of this, when I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, I took the disease seriously and have my controlling methods in place.

The most important controlling method that you can use is to check your sugar often. At a minimum, check your sugar when you get out of bed in the morning, thirty minutes before each meal, and two hours after each meal. The optimum range for your sugars to be is between 80 and 110. These are good numbers for an individual with diabetes. It is very difficult to judge this by how you feel, because I have seen my mother with her sugar over 400 and she felt and looked fine. Without the benefit of the glucose monitor, we would have never known that her sugar was that high. The reason that you check your sugar so often is that food intake is what puts the sugar in your blood. Checking the blood sugar after meals gives you a better way to determine what foods are safe for you to eat.

Another very important controlling method for diabetes is medication. For type 2 diabetes, you may find yourself prescribed Janeuva, Metforman, or the combination of the two, Janumet. I am personally on Janumet. The best thing that you can do with this medication is to follow your doctor's orders with regards to taking it. I am personally taking the pill with breakfast and with dinner. I don't tarry from this because while I am taking the medication as prescribed, my sugars are in the eighties.

Some things that you can do on your own to control your diabetes is to control your diet and exercise. The rewards of these two activities go farther than just controlling your blood sugar. If you control your diet and exercise regularly, than you will notice an immediate result of feeling better. After a while of these activities, you will notice that you are losing weight, if you are overweight. I am living proof of this as when I was diagnosed with the disease, I weighed almost 385 pounds. Now, fifteen months later, I am 285 pounds, and my quality of life has gone through the roof. I didn't know it before I was diagnosed, but my body was a weight gaining machine. I had an overload of insulin in my system which meant that my body was processing all of the sugar that I took in which instantly turned into fatty tissue that was stored in my body. When I got diagnosed and my insulin and blood sugar finally got regulated, I noticed that my body was shedding weight as it was going out of style. With the added benefit of eating better and exercising regularly, I dropped weight quickly, and I am now living with my diabetes, and I am living well.

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