Knowing the level of glucose, or sugar, in your blood can help you understand your risk for developing diabetes.
If you already know you have diabetes, monitoring your blood sugar helps you control the disease.
Diabetes is a serious disease, and many people don’t realize they have it. By working with your doctor and other health professionals, you can devise a plan—involving the food you eat, your activity level, and possibly medications—that can prevent type 2 diabetes (often called adult onset diabetes) or slow its course if you do have the disease.
In general, widely recognized healthy eating practices will help to lower your blood sugar levels:
- Eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, favoring less starchy choices such as green beans, broccoli and spinach. Lentils and legumes (such as kidney beans) are very beneficial, too.
- Buy whole grain foods, including breads, pastas and cereals.
- Eat fish 2 or 3 times a week, and pick lean cuts of meat and skinless poultry.
- Choose non-fat dairy items (milk, cheese and yogurt) and low-calorie drinks instead of sugary sodas and fruit drinks.
- Save pies, cakes and fatty ice cream for special occasions, and reduce your intake of other high-calorie snack foods such as chips and cookies.
Physical activity offers many benefits—one of them being a positive affect on your blood sugar. Exercise uses up the glucose stored in your muscles, and when your muscles run low on this energy source they draw more glucose from your blood. So a regular exercise program will help to lower your blood sugar. If you don’t have an exercise program, talk to your doctor about starting one. For many beginners, plain old walking is a great place to start.
Find ways to put more relaxation and less stress into your life as well. When you’re feeling stressed, hormones can make your blood glucose rise. So identify the stress factors in your life and counteract them with such reliable stressbusters as exercise, social activity, hobbies and meditation.
Sources: American Diabetes Association, National Diabetes Information, Clearinghouse
What Should My Blood Sugar Level Be?
We all have glucose, or sugar, in our blood. A simple test will indicate whether your glucose level is too high and you need to take extra measures to control it. The results of the test, which is taken after fasting, are typically expressed as milligrams per deciliter, or mg/dl. Here’s how the American Diabetes Association evaluates blood glucose levels:
Normal: Less than 100 mg/dl.
Pre-diabetes: 100-125 mg/dl.
Diabetes: 126 mg/dl or higher.
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