Saturday, October 17, 2015

Navratri and Diabetes

Navratri and diabetes

The celebrations in Navratri draws the excitement among people and among the devotees it’s the time for nine days fasting. Fasting will help in cleansing and detoxifying your body and mind.
  
Being a diabetic, you should avoid excess of festive food as well as fasting. Diabetics are more prone to health risk. As it is the personal choice it is not desirable not to eat for a long time in fact small frequent meals are advisable to maintain the blood glucose level. Include more of fruits, vegetables and salads.

Consult your Diabetologist in Delhi before fasting 

You may need a change in medication or dosage modification of some medicines or Insulin if you have to fast. Some antidiabetic medicines (like Glimipiride, Gliclazide, Glibenclamide, Glipizide, etc..), and short acting and premixed Insulins are prone to cause hypoglycemia in absence of sufficient food intake whereas others may not. 

Choose wisely
Usually in fasting high calorie food intake is more like pakoras, papad, pooris, tikka, sabudana, buckwheat flour, etc.  All these are calorie rich and can quickly shoot up the blood glucose.

Try to include food cooked in less oil, and cooking methods to be adopted should be baking, grilling, or in non-stick pan
Also during fasting avoid caffeine beverages as they can be dehydrating and lead to difficulties, and hydrate yourself with plenty of water and beverages like lemon water, coconut water and buttermilk whole day.

One should check the blood glucose levels frequently when on fasting as you should be more careful about your health. Listed below few points which will help you to manage your diabetes well during fasting:

·         Drink any beverage or eat fruit after every 2 hour.
·         Consume milk and its products after every short interval.
·        Do consult your Diabetologist before fasting Don’t miss your medicine
·         If you feel hypoglycaemia or low sugar levels immediately take some form of sugar.
·         Modify the dose of  insulin as per the sugar levels

Monday, October 12, 2015

Stress and Diabetes


WHAT IS STRESS?

Stress is a natural feeling that is created in the mind, and is the way the body responds to a particular threat. Stress triggers physiological, emotional and chemical reactions in the body through a complex signaling pathway between neurons and body cells-either mental or physical. Physically it can be injury or illness and mentally problems in personal or professional life.

In our lives reason of stress can be many - family, job, finance, relationship or illness. If someone is having stress, it may cause following symptoms:
  •          Changes in eating habits- Loss of appetite or binge eating
  •          Disturbance in sleep
  •          Weight gain or loss
  •          Anxiety - Becomes nervous easily
  •          Muscle tension
  •          Feeling depressed
  •          Increased irritability-Anger
  •          Common problems like constipation, diarrhea, indigestion
  •          Loss of interest in sex
  •          Feeling weak
  •          Sweating

Stress & Diabetes

Managing the stress with diabetes is essential as it can alter the blood glucose levels. Generally mental stress raises the glucose level in diabetics but with type 1 diabetes it show the varied reactions, like in stress there glucose levels can go down and it may leads to hypoglycemia.

The relationship between diabetes and stress has other causes like:

  •   Lifestyle changes
  •   Fear of diabetes related complications in future
  •   Frustration of having diabetes
  •   Depressed about following the diabetic diet
  •   Worry about blood glucose levels
  •   Distress of insulin dependence
  •   Lack of family support
  •   Challenges in social group
  •   Increased Financial burden
  •   Medication

How can Stress Be Harmful?


Diabetes management can get disturbed by stress due to elevated blood glucose levels, provoking negative thoughts, difficulty in decision making, or changing eating habits. Continued stress also leads to elevated levels of Cholesterol, raises Blood Pressure and increases Heart rate. These all work together to push a Diabetic person into vicious cycle of poor control and increasing complications. So Stress management should be an inherent part of any Diabetes management plan.