Control diabetes
published: Wednesday | January 15, 2003
IF YOU have already been diagnosed with diabetes, control measures include exercise, planned diets and weight management.
Exercise helps your body use insulin and lowers the amount of sugar in
the blood. It also helps open up blood vessels in the legs and heart, and
makes you feel good. It helps burn up any extra food you may eat which would
otherwise be stored as fat.
Basically, the diet for persons with diabetes is no different from a normal
diet but usually diabetics should work with their physicians and nutritionists
map out a meal plan. This plan will present guides of the amount of food to
be eaten and when they should be eaten.
Being obese or overweight makes it more difficult to control your diabetes
and usually obese people require more insulin to handle the food they are
eating. Part of the management plan is therefore to control weight. The nutritionist
would advise you to eat less and cut back on certain foods like those with
lots of fat (such as butter, margarine, and meats with lots of fats).
