DIAGNOSIS

you’ve been diagnosed. now what?

A diabetes diagnosis can be overwhelming. Here’s how to take control.

What Is Diabetes?

To manage your diabetes well, you first need to understand what is happening inside your body.

Type 2 diabetes has a number of contributing factors, such as excess weight, sedentary lifestyle, and genetics. An underlying factor is when the body’s muscle, liver, and fat cells resist the effects of insulin, which causes a buildup of glucose in the blood. This is called insulin resistance.

Type 2 diabetes is also characterized by inadequate insulin secretion from the beta cells in the pancreas. This is called insulin insufficiency, which can be caused by genetics and sometimes by years of insulin resistance. People with prediabetes and type 2 have both insulin resistance and insulin insufficiency.

What Happens When I Eat?

One of the most important things to understand is how food affects your body differently now that you have diabetes.

“Before you had diabetes, your body was on autopilot,” says Donna Starck, RD, LD, CDE, of UnityPoint Health in Des Moines.

When you ate carbohydrate, your blood sugar would rise and your pancreas would respond with the right amount of insulin, a hormone that allows the body’s cells to receive and use glucose for energy.

With diabetes, your body requires assistance. This is because your body isn’t making any insulin, isn’t producing enough insulin, or can no longer properly use the insulin it produces. This is what happens when a person with type 2 diabetes eats carbohydrate:

One of the most important things to understand is how food affects your body differently now that you have diabetes.

• Food goes down your esophagus and into your stomach.

• The digestive system quickly breaks down carbohydrate into glucose.

• Glucose enters the bloodstream.

• The pancreas releases insulin in response to a buildup of glucose in the bloodstream.

• Insulin tries to attach to the body’s cell receptors, but it is unable to bind to the receptors properly.

• Glucose cannot enter the cell and continues to build up in the bloodstream.

• The pancreas continues to release insulin in an effort to lower blood sugar. Thus, many people with type 2 diabetes have very high levels of insulin circulating in their bloodstreams.

Blood sugar checks provide insight into how food, stress, exercise, and other factors affect blood glucose levels.

Manage Diabetes Mindfully

The progression of type 2 diabetes is managed by eating healthfully, exercising, monitoring your blood sugar, and taking medication. Just as important: taking care of your mental health.

Eat Right

A large part of managing diabetes is being mindful of what you eat. What you eat directly affects your blood sugar levels. Foods that contain carbohydrate have the greatest impact on your blood sugar. In this book, we’ll show you how to eat mindfully by planning meals, reading labels, listening to hunger cues, thoughtfully filling your plate, and more.

Move More

Exercise has many benefits in diabetes management: Among them are helping to lower blood sugar levels, bringing down your A1C, improving circulation, and decreasing stress. Aim to get 30 minutes of moderate activity five days each week—anything from a brisk walk to swimming to cycling. Or try our workouts in Mindful Fitness Moves. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) also recommends getting up and moving every 30 minutes—try marching in place, stretching, or doing side lunges.

Monitor and Adhere

In this book, we’ll focus on eating right and moving more. For many people, it’s important to check your blood sugar a few times a day and to take the medications your doctor prescribes.

Blood sugar checks provide insight into how food, stress, exercise, and other factors affect blood glucose levels. Check several times a day and make those checks count. Here are mindful ways to check:

• Rotate fasting checks before meals, after meals, before bed, and during the night to limit the number of test strips you use each day.

• Check just before you eat and one to two hours after to learn how a meal or snack affects your blood glucose levels.

• Note how you feel before and after eating. For example, if a large breakfast of sausage, eggs, and toast leaves you sluggish, drop the sausage in favor of a small piece of fruit. If stress causes your blood sugars to spike, find ways to decompress (we’ll show you how 5-minute stress busters).

Stress Less

Diabetes can stress you out (to say the least). But managing that stress is vital to diabetes management because it can have serious effects on your blood sugar. Hormones, such as epinephrine and cortisol, increase during stressful events, encouraging the liver to produce extra glucose while also increasing insulin resistance. Learn how to identify and combat stress starting Dealing with Stress.