The Critical Importance of Exercise and Diet for Type II Diabetics
Even though modern diabetic medicine provides a powerful advantage over insulin, you cannot ignore your diet and exercise habits. In fact, failing to exercise and eat a sensible diet can cause all kinds of long term damage. For example, if you take conventional diabetic medicines, you may wind up with irreversible kidney damage. This is especially important to consider if you are approaching your golden years.
Regardless of your age, taking diabetic medicine involves a great deal of responsibility and attention to detail. It is important to realize that the medication you take cannot simply regulate its effects in order to give you an ideal blood sugar level at all times. Today, even people that monitor themselves carefully wind up with excessively low sugar readings at least once a week. If you do not catch these episodes in time, they can easily lead to coma, stroke, and death. In addition, if you are driving or operating some other type of moving equipment, the dizziness and fainting associated with low sugar episodes can be extremely dangerous.
As you may be aware, there are at least three elements that control your sugar level. First, your pancreas may not be making enough insulin to keep up with even a normal amount of carbohydrate in your diet. Depending on the severity of decreased insulin production, you will either need to try a low carbohydrate diet, or take insulin to ensure you get enough nutrients in your diet. Interestingly enough, insulin production is not constant. Therefore, you may find that you can consume more carbohydrates on some days than others.
Today, researchers also understand that your cells may not be as receptive to allowing glucose to enter. In these cases, your body will need to make even more insulin to compensate. Many medications on the market today work to increase insulin sensitivity. On the other hand, you can achieve the same goal simply by exercising. A good workout will force your cells to let more glucose in, and thus make the insulin in your body more effective.
Surprisingly enough, your liver may also be playing a critical role in high sugar levels. In some cases, your stomach may not send a signal to indicate that you have eaten enough. Therefore, your liver will start dumping sugar into your bloodstream, regardless of how much may be already circulating. Typically, when you space out your meals, and pair your carbohydrates carefully with other foods, you can manually control this process.
When it comes right down to it, Type II diabetes is still best controlled by diet and exercise. Even though it takes some trial and error to arrive at the right diet, timing of meals, and exercise types, you will find it is well worth the effort. Aside from protecting your body from the long term side effects of diabetic medicines, you can live a much more normal lifestyle. At the very least, when you make use of diet and exercise, you will have a much lower risk of having your sugar go too low.
