Helping Families with Diabetes

Finding out your child has diabetes can be very scary for any parent, and even more so for the child.  Your life changes in that moment from the way you prepare meals, your daily routine, and fitting time in your calendar for important doctor’s visits.  The American Diabetes Association offers a kit to families of children and to those children living with type 1 diabetes to help them get started on their life’s journey with diabetes.  The kit, which is free of charge, includes a basic carb counter, a diabetes guide for parents, children, and siblings of those with diabetes, a diabetes dictionary to help define diabetes-related terms, and a card game for the family to help everyone in your household learn more about type 1 diabetes.  This kit will start to give you the knowledge you need to transform any fear of diabetes you feel into strength.

You may have an app on your phone to pay your bills, to make your list for the grocery store, to track your calories, and even to track your blood glucose levels.  A recent report states that there may be a phone app on the way for your healthcare provider that can help improve stroke care.  A doctor in Houston has created an app to help doctors like him enter patient data such as their symptoms, background info, and stroke score, to help figure out what new treatments the patient may qualify for to help prevent them from having another stroke.

Sugar is found in many of the foods you eat each day whether you realize it or not.  Most obvious are sugary drinks, candies, baked goods, and ice cream, but sugar is also found in foods such as sauces, cereals, some frozen foods, as well as in snacks that may seem more salty than sweet.  Eating lots of sugar can not only lead to weight gain, but can also increase risk of chronic disease such as heart disease and diabetes.  Ways to cut sugar in your daily meals and snacks include drinking water instead of sugary drinks, avoiding sugary sweets and baked goods, avoiding processed foods, as well as replacing sugar in recipes with sugar-free sweeteners.

Sleep can be highly underrated in a world where there seems to not be enough time in the day to get everything done that you want to get done.  Sleep, however, is an important part of your health as much as eating and exercise, so should be on top of your to-do list each day.  A lack of sleep has been linked to obesity, depression, as well as dangers in driving while tired, among other things. Regardless of how you may feel, you cannot skip sleep and make up for it later, just like how you cannot skip meals and expect to be able to binge later and be healthy. Therefore, just as you make time to eat your meals and snacks each day, make time to give your body a rest so it can have the energy to take care of you.

Your blood glucose meter as well as the many apps on your phone can help you track your health progress at home.  However, when you visit the doctor, you may not have time to go over all of this data.  In turn, your diabetes care may not be as helpful as it could be in preventing low and high blood glucose episodes.  A new device by Glooko can plug into your blood glucose meter and upload all of your blood glucose readings to your phone so you can send your healthcare provider your data files.  This transfer of data can help your healthcare provider know when you may be having low or high blood glucose episodes, so they can tweak your diabetes care plan to improve your health outcomes.  If you show a dangerous trend of low blood glucose levels, your healthcare provider will know that they need to contact you right away so you can avoid a trip to the hospital.