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5 Ways to take care of your Diabetes with confidence

From getting support to staying motivated, here are 5 ways to manage your diabetes with confidence.
From getting support to staying motivated, here are 5 ways to manage your diabetes with confidence.

Living with Type 1 Diabetes is just as much mental as it is physical - and feeling disempowered can show up in many ways writes Lauren Bongiorno, author of the Diabetic Health Journal. Besides feeling overwhelmed by the 24/7 attention required, you may also feel a loss of freedom when it comes to food or your lifestyle and experience stress from unexpected highs or lows. 

Here are 5 ways to manage your Diabetes with confidence:  

1. Single out your challenges 

How do you eat an elephant? Bit by bit. When you think about everything you need to do to manage your diabetes, it can be overwhelming. To deal with Diabetes distress, the Centre of Disease Control and Prevention suggests that you make a list of all of the tasks you have to do to take care of yourself each day. Try to work on each task separately, one at a time. 

2. Manage it efficiently  

Diabetes management takes a lot of time during an average day and it can be disruptive. But with great management systems, like the latest Flash Glucose Monitoring System from Abbott Laboratories, you can effectively monitor your glucose without any needles*.  

3. Find support in friends and family 

You might feel alone in managing your Diabetes, but family and friends can help you in several ways. Share your journey with the people who are closest to you and let them understand what you go through every day. Be honest about the problems you have in dealing with Diabetes and how they can help you.  

By including family and friends, they can remind you to take your medicines, help monitor your blood sugar levels, join you in being physically active, and prepare healthy meals. It’ll also help if your loved ones are prepared for emergencies. 

4. Stay motivated  

With many things in life, people know what’s good for them but just can’t scrape up the motivation to pursue it. We know we need to eat more greens, exercise more and lower our stress, but it’s easier said than done. Similarly, many people with Diabetes may experience a lack of motivation somewhere along the line. 

Stay motivated to manage your Diabetes by setting goals for yourself and rewarding yourself for reaching them. Also surround yourself with a support system that can help you stay motivated.  

5. Keep learning 

The digital era has brought us an app for everything - even for managing Diabetes. Apps like Diabetes Connect and Glucose buddy enables you to log blood sugar, meals, insulin, medication and export the information into clear reports and graphics. This will allow you to learn from your lifestyle. Other apps like the FreeStyle LibreLink can be linked to your FreeStyle Libre Flash Glucose Monitor System and store all your information while also updating your friends and family through the LibreLinkUp app.  Both FreeStyle LibreLink and LibreLinkUp are available free of charge in the Google Play store and Apple App store. 

Stay in touch with the latest technologies in the Diabetes management field to continually better your lifestyle and learn from your readings. 

*Fingersticks are required for treatment decisions when you see Check Blood Glucose symbol, when symptoms do not match system readings, when you suspect readings may be inaccurate, or when you experience symptoms that may be due to high or low blood glucose. 

This post is sponsored by Abbott Laboratories S.A. (Pty) Ltd. and produced by BrandStudio24 for Health24. 

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