Diabetes Treatment

Today, more than ever before, people with diabetes can expect to live active, independent and vital lives if they make a lifelong commitment to careful diabetes treatment and management.

Diabetes is treated in the following ways:

• Education: Diabetes education is an important first step. All people with diabetes need to learn about their condition in order to make healthy lifestyle choices and manage their diabetes.
• Physical Activity: Regular physical activity helps your body lower blood glucose levels, promotes weight loss, reduces stress and enhances overall fitness.
• Nutrition: What, when and how much you eat all play an important role in regulating how well your body manages blood glucose levels.
• Weight Management: Maintaining a healthy weight is especially important in the management of type 2 diabetes.
• Medication: Type 1 diabetes is always treated with insulin. Type 2 diabetes is managed through physical activity and meal planning and may require diabetes medications and/or insulin to assist your body in making or using insulin more effectively.
• Lifestyle Management: Learning to reduce stress levels in day-to-day life can help people with diabetes better manage their disease.
• Blood Pressure: High blood pressure can lead to eye disease, heart disease, stroke and kidney disease, so people with diabetes should try to maintain a blood pressure at or below 130/80.To do this, you may need to change your eating and physical activity habits and/or take diabetes medication.

Type 1 is the type of diabetes that people most often get before 30 years of age. All people with type 1 diabetes need to take insulin (IN-suh-lin) because their bodies do not make enough of it. Insulin helps turn food into energy for the body to work.