Consistent Management of Your Diabetes

It's important to keep your blood sugar levels consistent - and I don't mean by drinking emergency O.J. or using emergency insulin injections. There are a few ways to make sure that your blood sugar stays relatively consistent while you live your life.

First, don't let stress get in the way of your usual management routine. It's easy to let being busy and stressed get in the way of eating well, exercising, and checking your blood sugar, but stress by itself can influence your blood sugar levels, so it's a bad time to stop checking up on yourself. Instead, try to keep track of how stressed you are compared to where your blood sugar levels are to see how the stress is affecting you.

It's important to control what you eat, but it's also important to keep track of how much you eat and keep portion sizes consistent. You may also want to keep track of when you eat and try to have your meals at similar times (or similar distances from each other). Try not to go long periods of time without eating one day and then eat every hour the next day. It's also a good idea to keep your carbohydrates consistent. Instead of eating pancakes with syrup and cream of wheat for breakfast and then eating vegetables for the rest of the day, eat small amounts of carbs at every meal to keep your blood glucose even throughout the day.

Exercise is helpful for management, but it can be dangerous if you aren't careful about it. Make sure that you are checking your blood sugar levels before and after you exercise, and start slow until you know how it's going to affect you. Even small things can help to lower your blood sugar levels and help you to process insulin a little better, so you don't need to run marathons to manage your diabetes.

If your hormone levels change, it can change your  body's patterns. In the case of illness, the hormones that help you to get better can also raise your blood sugar levels, so you should be ready to work with that. For women, menstrual cycles can throw off the best-laid plans for consistency, so it's a good idea to keep track of the patterns so that you can start to predict what's going to happen.

Alcohol can really throw a wrench in your plans if you haven't adjusted for it. Alcoholic drinks are high in carbs and calories, and they can also throw off your liver, which usually helps when your blood sugar drops. (It can't help your blood sugar if it's trying to process alcohol.) If you drink, talk to your doctor about how much is okay, and plan it into your daily meal plans, because it will make a difference.

Be careful with your medications, and be especially careful when you're thinking about adding a new medication. Ask your doctor about how OTC or prescription medications will change your diabetes management routine.

Although this list seems long, just considering these things and planning for them beforehand keep your life less hectic and less focused on diabetes.