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Once diagnosed with diabetes, it’s time to start taking the necessary steps to get your health under control and improve your quality of life.
It’s essential to take charge of the situation by learning as much as you can about the disease and its management. Setting yourself achievable goals, adopting a diabetes diet, and exercising more are just three small steps on the path to improving your overall health.
People with type 2 diabetes are 2-3 times more likely to have a heart attack or stroke compared to someone living without diabetes.5,6
Learn how you can potentially reduce the risk.
Tackling diabetes head-on can be stressful, emotional and overwhelming. Taking charge of your diagnosis early and tackling your situation head-on is a proactive way to get on top of this chronic condition.
How to handle your diagnosis depends on what stage of diabetes you’re at. Pre-diabetes can largely be managed through lifestyle changes, such as diet and exercise.8 If you have type 2 diabetes, a progressive disease, you may find your treatment plans change over time.
Lifestyle changes are the first steps to improve your overall health and boost your quality of life when suffering from type 1 or type 2 diabetes.2
Dietary changes
Expect to be told to reduce your fat intake, eat leaner meats, watch your portion size and think carefully about the type of carbohydrates you are putting in your body.10
A diet can be tough to stick to, but there’s lots of inspiring diabetic meal planners and tasty diabetes recipes that will help you control diabetes with diet. Learn more about diabetes diet here.
Increase in physical activity
If you weren’t active before being diagnosed with diabetes, the first change you’ll likely notice is having to carve out time to work out.9 We’re not talking about giving up three days a week to train for a marathon but giving up even an hour of your time to exercise may seem like hard work at first. Get started with exercise here.
Recognising symptoms of hypos
Being diagnosed with type 1 or type 2 diabetes means you’re always on the lookout for symptoms.
People with diabetes may experience low blood sugar, which is also called hypoglycaemia or a “hypo”. Some of the common symptoms of hypos include confusion, intense hunger, feeling sick, clumsiness, blurred vision and slurred speech. You may find you experience one or more of these when your blood sugar levels are low.11 You can learn more about hypos here.
