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Management of diabetes needs awareness. Learn what triggers, increases, and/or decreases your blood sugar and how to manage them regularly.
It can be difficult to maintain blood sugar levels within the healthy range set by your doctor. That's because many different things can influence your blood sugar to rise or fall unexpectedly.
Your blood sugar level may be affected by the following:
Food
Eating well is essential to good health, regardless of whether or not you have diabetes. However, understanding how different foods affect blood sugar levels is essential for everyone with diabetes. It's not just the foods you eat but also the quantities and combinations you make.
The most common type of diabetes is Type 2 diabetes, caused by insulin resistance. Studies have shown that a whole-food, plant-based diet can reverse insulin resistance. I invite you to listen to my podcast to learn about whole food plant-based diet nutrition.
Physical Exercises and Activities
Include regular physical activity as part of your strategy to control your diabetes. Sugar is burned as fuel by your muscles during physical activity. Regular exercise improves insulin sensitivity in the body.
Your blood sugar level will go down because of all these things. More intense exercise produces longer-lasting results. However, even relatively light tasks, such as cleaning, gardening, or being on one's feet for long periods, might help lower blood sugar.
Medication
When diet and exercise aren't enough to control your diabetes, your doctor may prescribe insulin or another diabetes medicine to help bring your blood sugar levels down to a more normal range. However, the time and quantity of these doses greatly affect the drugs' efficacy. Your blood sugar levels can be affected by medications you take for diseases other than diabetes.
Stress
Long-term stress might raise blood sugar levels because of the hormones your body produces in response to stress. Stress hormones such as cortisol and glucagon can directly increase blood sugar. Stress can also indirectly increase blood sugar by inducing cravings and stress eating, making it even more challenging to stick to your regular healthy diet. There are ways to deal with stress without negatively impacting your body and raising your blood sugar.
Conclusion
You can better prepare and manage blood sugar changes if you have a firm grasp of all the factors that contribute to these changes. Talk to your doctor or diabetes health care team if you have problems maintaining a healthy blood sugar level.
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