Monitoring Diabetes

Regular monitoring is the key to keeping your diabetes in check and living a healthy life.

The secret in being a productive diabetic is to monitor blood sugars and use it as a base to make informed decisions regarding dietary and life style modifications. So what is smart self blood sugar monitoring?

Help your diabetologist by taking a spread out of blood sugars - pre and post meal (two hours after the meal) on different days, coupled with one or two readings of 5:00 pm sugars, bedtime sugars and 3:00 am sugars.

Bedtime blood glucose level should be maintained between 100 and 140 mg/dl. If bed time glucose is less than 100 mg/dl consume a carbohydrate (CHO) snack before going to bed. If the 5:00 pm random blood sugar is less than 80 mg/dl, there is risk of going into hypoglycaemia at night.

If you are a physically active person, check your sugars pre-exercise. If it is less than 90 mg/dl, consume a carbohydrate snack and also check on your insulin dosage.

If the difference between pre and post meal sugars is less than 50 mg/dl, it indicates that the food choices are working well.

If blood sugars are more than 240 mg/dl, check back on food, medication and limit vigorous exercise.

Make notes on deviation in sugars with the changes in meal pattern or exercise schedule or eating out. Check out self-monitoring devices to achieve this.

What your self-monitoring device should have :
Pick a monitoring device that’s easy to use. You want to be able to monitor your glucose as easily as possible rather than it becoming another chore. Some of the latest devices have a variety of features, which include:
Auto-coding: The calibration code is embedded on each strip. One does not have to manually feed it and thereby eliminates coding related errors.
Results flagging: Some devices have the ability to separately store fasting and post meal readings, so you don’t have to maintain an additional log book to record results.
Small pricking devices: Another feature to look out for if you want to monitor your blood-glucose painlessly.
Temperature sensor: This sensor helps you get temperature-corrected results.

Happy to be dieting

Here’s how you can stay motivated when trying to follow a diet plan

Identify the triggers

If you want to stay motivated towards your health, you must identify your problem areas. This will help you deal with them in a planned manner. Various people use food to deal with depressing emotions, like disappointment in office, rejection in relationships or even boredom. Analyse your problem area and figure out how you can deal with it. Also, change your lifestyle a bit. Don’t stock high-calorie food so that you won’t binge during a crisis. Instead, stock healthy options such as fruits, low-fat yoghurts and sugar-free gum.

Don’t go hungry

It may sound ironic, but the biggest cause of overeating is undereating. Studies have shown, that if you go for too long without food, chances are that you will reach a point where you won’t be able to control yourself and end up bingeing. Rigid diet plans simply don’t work. Always opt for balanced and planned snacking options to keep your hunger pangs under control. Also, indulge yourself with a small treat once a week.

Find a motivator

We all need our support systems. These can be in the form of a spouse, a friend and even an online friend. Think of a couple of people around you who would qualify as your cheering buddies, and rely on them for support and encouragement to help you reach your health goal.

Good things take time

It’s very simple to see someone with a perfect body and feel jealous. However, what we don’t realise, is that the concerned person has spent adequate time and attention to get in perfect shape. It’s not something impossible. And the most important aspect you must consider, is that it will take time. Also, your body type plays an important part in this. You may even end up trying harder to achieve the same goal but the key lies in appreciating yourself for achieving smaller targets and being consistent.

Source: TOI

BALDING CAN BE REVERSED

Balding at whatever age is not without trauma. You may agree to live with it but it can’t stop bothering you. It is that visible handicap that is constantly nagging by the way people look at you, the way they judge you or the way they perceive your personality, ability and acceptability. Contrary to belief, men and women are equally susceptible to social negativity attached to baldness. Women actually are known to go into irreversible depression and tend to withdraw themselves from social mainstrain exposure. Men who are more prone to what has come to be known as malepattern baldness, lose self esteem and confidence and could become ‘losers’ in all aspects of life. The metrosexual male as we know the modern male urbanite is however no longer looking at baldness as ‘fait accompli’ and is willing to alter his hair status if he can. Same is true about his female counterpart who wants to look beyond covering her head with a dupatta. Fortunately for the present times, the solutions of the last century no longer finds favour with the new generation of hair loss victims, because those solutions never worked. Today, there is hope, for, the world is rediscovering the magic of Ayurveda all over again. Dr Raksha and her research team have been doing a lot of work in the field of hair Regrowth Syndrome and have based all their researches on cure for baldness on the time-honoured wisdom contained in Ayurveda. Her treatment centre, Amazing Herbal Remedies (AHR) has treated many men, women and children for baldness, alopecia and patchy baldness besides premature graying and scalp infections. The Ayurvedic methods used for curing baldness and other hair related maladies have been effective in all age groups. Dr Raksha’s treatment is totally herbal and safe. She has not come across any side effects so far. Her formulations are closely guarded family-secrets while the research findings are often shared with Ayurveda professionals. The most wonderful thing about AHR however is that they have been able to apply Ayurveda in combination with lifestyle correction methods in the modern perspective. The fusion of modern technologies in processing Ayurvedic formulations has made immense difference in quality of their products.

Dr.Raksha and her team can be contacted in person for consultations and check-up at: D-13, G.F., South Ext. I. New Delhi 110047. Appointments can be sought at 011-24648617/18; 41646192.

She also offers online consultations at www.amazingherbalremedies.com / www.herbalhaircure.net - TNN/TOI

How to get your teen to lose weight

Tell your teenaged child to go slow on junk food and aerated drinks. Kids wouldn’t like to give them up altogether, but that’s okay – only these things shouldn’t be part of their regular everyday diet. Your teen must also cut down on tea and coffee intake. Drive home the benefits of stuff like green tea. Gently prod them onto this path and it will work if done subtly. Tell your child how good he or she will look minus all those extra kilos. Change your own eating and exercising patterns. In fact, if you’ve been neglecting yourself lately, this will be a motivating factor for you too. One way of losing weight safely is to have the last meal of the day before 7.30 pm. If your kid feels hungry later in the night, he/she can snack on a fruit or a glass of low fat milk. Vary the exercise routines so that they do not get boring. Incorporate a regimen of walking every day for at least half an hour. As the stamina increases, you could combine brisk walking with jogging for a longer period of time. Get your kid to also join a gym. Meeting other youngsters will also certainly help him or her to feel inspired enough to continue. TOI

EAT FAT STAY THIN

You needn’t cut down on your favourite foods as long as you eat them the right way. Here’s how to have what you want and stay slim .

• SUGAR Go for foods such as fruit yoghurt, sweetened breakfast cereal or even jam, which will satisfy a sweet tooth but aren’t packed with fat and calories. For women on a diet, up to 35 grams of added sugar per day should be fine.

• ALCOHOL A couple of small glasses a day won’t usually cause weightgain as long as that’s your limit and you ideally drink it as an accompaniment to a healthy meal. Alcohol doesn’t get stored directly as fat in the body but if you take more than your safe calorie intake, you’ll ultimately put on weight.

• PEANUTS If you’re strict about having just a handful, nuts can easily be incorporated in your ‘get-slim’ diet. In fact, nuts make a good snack for people trying to shed weight and can help weight control because they are so filling.

• BREAD It can actually be valuable for weight-watchers as it is filling while being relatively low on calories. Your best choice is a grainy type, as it’s digested more slowly and produces a smoother blood sugar and insulin response.

• CHOCOLATE A 30 gram daily serving provides about 150 calories and nine grams of fat and is an acceptable daily treat.

• CHEESE Go for a strong cheese so you get maximum taste. You’ll only need a matchbox-sized serving that provides less than 150 calories. TNN