A good diabetic manual is a useful tool to help manage diabetes in either the newly diagnosed or the lifelong diabetic who may be having trouble with self-management of their own diabetes. It is also helpful for the caretaker of a diabetic who can’t completely take care of themselves, because of age or disability. But it’s important that a diabetic manual is well-researched and thorough if it is to be depended on as a reliable source of information.
A good diabetic manual will help the newly diagnosed understand their disease and will help the long-term diabetic get back on track with good habits that they may have gradually fallen away from. While there are many options for a good diabetic manual, it’s important to make sure it covers all aspects of diabetes. Managing this disease is much more than just injecting insulin and testing your blood sugar. No matter which diabetic manual you choose to use as your guide, it’s important to be sure it covers all of these important aspects of the disease.
What should be Included in a Good Diabetic Manual?
- Food – All food ingested into the body has some effect on your blood glucose levels. The foods you eat aren’t necessarily good or bad, but if you don’t understand how each of the foods you eat is affecting your blood glucose, you can’t possibly develop your own good meal and diet plan. A good diabetic manual will help you understand what you should eat at certain times, when you should eat, and how much you should eat. It should also give you an understanding of what the different food types do to your balance of glucose levels and nutrition.
- Physical Activity – all diabetics have heard that they should exercise. But a good diabetic manual will give you an understanding of why you need to be active. Physical activity not only keeps your weight down, but helps you “burn off” blood glucose and helps your insulin, if you use it, work better. A good manual will help you understand these relationships.
- Stress Management – Most diabetics have a stress problem, and there is a relationship between stress levels and the amount of glucose in your blood. Coping with stress will help you with your blood glucose control, and a good diabetic manual will give you practical methods to deal with stress, and an understanding of what it does to you.
- Medications – many, but not all, diabetics will use some type of medication to manage their disease. A good diabetic manual should help you understand the effects and side-effects of common diabetic medication, and give you enough knowledge to be able to participate in the decisions regarding what medicines you are going to take and how you will take them. Not all diabetics require medication, and a doctor that wants to go right to the prescription pad is not really doing you a favor.
Blood Glucose Monitoring – This important aspect of managing diabetes needs to be thoroughly understood. You should know what the test results mean, what kind of testing you need to do on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis and why. It doesn’t help a whole lot to test just for the sake of testing. A good diabetic manual will give you an understanding of what all the acronyms and numbers mean – and how to translate the results into a meaningful plan for you to use in managing your own personal and unique diabetes.
