The Key Diabetes Treatments
Successful diabetes treatments make all the difference when it comes to keeping your long-term health in check after facing a chronic illness. In fact, achieving balanced and effective diabetes treatments can be the key to living a healthy life with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Treatments will vary for each person, but there is a range of options available.
The first thing to know about diabetes treatments is that the type you get will depend on the type of diabetes that you have, and also more specific characteristics and factors too. Your treatment strategy should be something that’s agreed between you and your personal healthcare team.
The aim of diabetes treatments is to help keep your blood glucose levels as close to normal as possible. Training in managing glucose levels is, therefore, one of the most essential parts of any diabetes management. Treatment should be something that’s agreed on an individual basis and address lifestyle and medical issues.
Diabetes Treatments: Monitoring Your Blood Sugar
One of the most obvious treatments for diabetes involves monitoring your blood sugar regularly. You may need to do this as many as eight times a day depending on how severe your condition might be. Additionally, people who get insulin therapy might choose to monitor their blood sugar using a continuous glucose monitor.
Even with careful management, it’s possible for blood sugar levels to change unpredictably. With the right help from your diabetes team, however, you can learn how your blood sugar levels will change in response to physical activity, medication, food, stress, and more.
In addition to monitoring your blood sugar regularly, your doctor might also recommend looking into A1C testing to help and make sure that your levels of blood sugar on average are healthy over the course of two or three months. Compared with repeated blood sugar tests, A1C monitoring is usually more accurate, and can help to indicate that your diabetes treatments are working.
Diabetes Treatments: Insulin
One of the most common diabetes treatments around, people with type 1 diabetes will need insulin medication to live, while many people with type 2 diabetes also have to consider taking insulin. There are many types of insulin on the health market, such as rapid-action and long-acting insulin. Insulin cannot be taken orally and must be taken using a syringe.
In some cases, an insulin pump may also be an option. The pump is about the size of a cell phone, and it can be worn on the outside of your body. There’s a tube connecting the insulin to a catheter beneath the skin that helps to keep you topped up on insulin when necessary.
In some cases, other types of medication will also be provided with diabetes treatments. Some diabetes medications will stimulate the pancreas so that it begins to release and cultivate more insulin, other medications will inhibit the production of glucose in the liver, this will mean that you won’t need as much insulin in your system.
Some medications will also block the behavior of intestinal enzymes that are responsible for breaking down carbohydrates to make your tissues more sensitive to the insulin in your system.
