Achieve Normal Blood Sugar Levels - A Practical Guide For People With Diabetes
If you have diabetes, particularly type 1 diabetes or severe type 2 diabetes and you are on insulin, you will know that managing blood sugar levels can be like being on a roller coaster: sometimes they're too high and you correct; other times you have too much insulin for the amount of carbohydrates and exercise you are having and your blood sugar levels go too low, resulting in a hypo; then you eat lots of sweet things and longer acting carbohydrates to bring your blood sugar up and go too high again.
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In the longer term, there could be severe consequences of having high average blood sugar levels for months or years, such as:
- losing your eyesight
- having parts of your arms or legs amputated
- kidney damage
- ketoacidosis leading to a coma and possibly death.
Even if your blood sugar isn't so high, medium effects could be:
- poor eyesight, blurry vision
- losing sensation in your fingers and toes
- cramps in your legs
- yeast infections leading to thrush
- sore mouth
- wounds taking a long time to heal.
However, it is possible to reverse all these symptoms with a holistic health approach and a healthy lifestyle, including a healthy diet, exercise, stress reduction, mental and emotional techniques and raising your awareness and consciousness.
Diet
My key strategy to managing good blood sugar control is only to eat a relatively small amount of carbohydrates at each meal and for snacks. This means cutting out or significantly reducing the amount of starchy carbohydrates, such as bread, pasta, potatoes and rice you eat.
This will help to reduce your margin of error when estimating the amount of carbohydrates that are in your food. This will help you to avoid the roller coaster of blood sugar levels and to have stable blood sugar levels instead. It will help to reduce the uncertainties to do with other factors, such as glycaemic load, exercise, hormones, stress, illness or just the sometimes seemingly random workings of our bodies.
Replace the starchy carbohydrates by lots of vegetables, preferably raw ones and sprouted beans, seeds and legumes, e.g. mung bean sprouts, alfalfa sprouts. Get more of your protein from plants such as spinach and hemp and have healthy essential fats from plant fats such as avocados, nuts and seeds. This diet will also give you more nutrients for your body to heal itself.
Exercise
Regular exercise is a vital part of managing and reducing blood sugar levels. It works with the way your body is designed: to use energy from carbohydrates in your food to power your muscles directly when you move. Exercise also has multiple health benefits, both in terms of physical health and in overall well-being. Exercise releases endorphins, which are 'feel-good' hormones. This explains the feelings of satisfaction and even exhilaration after a good exercise session or workout. It's also great if you can exercise outdoors, preferably in the countryside, so you get the benefits of fresh air, more oxygen, sunshine and being in nature.
As you start to exercise, your body uses both glucose and fat to supply your muscles with energy. This could be from food if you've eaten fairly recently or from stores in the body. Otherwise, the glucose is released from glycogen stored in the liver and fat is taken from fat stores in your body, so it helps you to lose weight.
Exercise increases insulin sensitivity and for people with type 2 diabetes, it reduces insulin resistance. For people with type 1 diabetes, increased insulin sensitivity means that if you are going to exercise after the meal, you need less insulin for a meal.
Do some of each type of exercise regularly each week:
- Aerobic/ cardio-vascular - 20 to 40 minutes per day, 5 days a week
- Anaerobic/ strength training - 10 - 20 minutes, 3 days a week
- Stretching/ flexibility - 10 minutes a day, yoga class once a week
Other factors
Other noticeable factors that affected blood sugar: stress and illness increase it; relaxation decreases it; and for menstruating women, hormone changes with different times of the month increase and decrease it.
There are many studies showing strong links between stress, negative emotions and ill health. Your body has a physical reaction when you are stressed or feel bad, which makes it difficult for your body to function healthily or to heal itself.
Meditation for stress reduction
A wonderful way of relaxing and reducing stress is through regular meditation. There are huge numbers of scientific studies and papers describing the benefits of meditation on physical, mental and emotional health.
By far the most effective way to meditate that I've come across is by using binaural beat technology. It is a way of meditating that enables you to go very deep into meditation at the press of a button! You can do this by listening to meditation CDs with binaural beat technology.
This is a fantastic way of meditating effectively, with virtually no effort, using 'binaural beat' technology. This method allows you to meditate as though you had been practising for 10 or 20 years, like a Buddhist monk, and you get the benefits of meditation much more quickly and reliably. The beauty of this method is that it is very effective and easy to use. You can even do it while you are sleeping!
Achieve normal blood sugar levels
The information in this article will help you achieving normal blood sugar levels. It will also help you get your blood sugar stable and your long-term average blood sugar levels into the normal range, i.e. HbA1c between 4% and 6% or at least into the healthy blood sugar levels range, up to an HbA1c of 6.5%, so you won't get any long term complications. You will be able to reduce the amount of insulin you need and possibly even to come off insulin completely. If you pay directly for your medical bills, you will save money on buying insulin and you will avoid expensive unscheduled hospital visits and hospital stays.
For a 25-page report on 'How to Achieve Normal Blood Sugar Levels', please go to: [http://www.achievenormalbloodsugar.com]. This report gives much more detail and explanations on how to achieve normal blood sugar levels through improving diet, exercise and mental, emotional and spiritual health. The approach is a holistic one, recommending lifestyle changes and natural treatments and techniques. Following these recommendations will lead to a reduction in the amount of insulin or other medicines needed, with no nasty side effects. You will feel better and healthier overall.
If you would like health coaching on how to achieve normal blood sugar levels for those with diabetes orfor anyone with any other chronic health conditions, please contact Katherine at the website address above. For relaxation through meditation, I recommend a binaural beat CD that is very effective, as it uses harmonically layered frequencies. It is also very good value. The CD comes with explanations about each track and how to use the CD for best effect. You can find the meditation CD that I use through my website.
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