Diabetes Treatment
Read more about...
- Introduction for diabetes
- Diet for diabetes
- Nutritions and supplements for diabetes control
- Diabetes herbal treatment
- Aromatherapy treatment for diabetes
Treatment for diabetes involves three key components: insulin, diet, and exercise. These work together to help regulate blood-glucose levels.
If you have type I diabetes, your body is not producing adequate amounts of insulin and you will need either oral supplements or injections to get this essential hormone. If you need to give yourself insulin injections, you must learn this important skill from a clinic or hospital nurse. Within a few weeks or months of beginning insulin treatment, your insulin needs may decrease significantly. In fact, you may not need insulin at all at this point. You should be aware, however, that while this "honeymoon period" can last for up to two years, eventually you would need to go back to taking insulin. There are many intricacies involved in dealing with insulin injections. For example, it is important to take the injection in a different spot each day. You should learn about the different types of insulin, as well as the blood and urine tests that are used to monitor sugar and insulin levels. These are some of the many areas you will explore as you learn to live with diabetes.
Attention to diet is important. Too many carbohydrates can increase blood sugar; too few will lower it. People with diabetes have the same nutritional and caloric requirements as other people, but they need a diet that is carefully designed o give them the correct balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fats. Simply cutting out sugar is not enough. A successful diet plan includes all types of foods. Once you are taking insulin, it is important to eat appropriately so that your blood sugar doesn't fall too low and cause a hypoglycemic reaction. Also, you will need to eat at the same times each day. You need to eat a snack at midmorning and midafternoon, and you must eat the same number of calories from one day to the next. Five small meals a day are better than three large ones.
Exercise is important because it helps to lower blood-glucose levels, strengthen the body, and improve glucose and insulin management. Your doctor may recommend that you eat a snack before exercise so that your blood-sugar level is stable throughout the activity.
If you have type II diabetes and are overweight, the treatment of choice is weight loss. If this is not successful, the next step is to try hypoglycemic (blood-sugar-reducing) medicines that are taken orally. These drugs act primarily by stimulating the pancreas to secrete additional insulin. In many cases, however, even this is not enough and insulin, given either orally or by injections, is necessary. As with type I diabetes, appropriate diet and adequate exercise are essential.
For years, the sulfonylureas have been the oral medications of choice for type II diabetes. These drugs work by forcing the pancreas to secrete more insulin. Examples include tolbutamide (Orinase), tolazamide (Tolinase), acetohexamide (Dymelor), chlorpropamide (Diabinese), and the newer glyburide (Diabeta, Glynase, Micronase), glipizide (Glucotrol), and glymeperide (Amaryl), which tend to be stronger and more expensive. While all these drugs work in similar way, their strength and duration of action vary. Potential side effects also are similar, and include liver problems, low blood sugar, nausea, and an increased risk of heart disease.
Metformin (Glucophage), another oral diabetes agent, seems to stabilize both fasting and postprandial (after-meal) levels of blood sugar in adults, though hoe it works is not understood. It does not cause low blood sugar problems, and is more widely used for obese individuals than the sulfonylureas are. However, side effects of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain are common. Cardiovascular problems can be a problem with this drug, too.
Acarbose (Precose) is an oral agent that lowers blood sugar by competing with carbohydrates for absorption in the intestinal tract rather than by stimulating the release of insulin. Because of this, it can cause a significant increase in bowel gas, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, especially when carbohydrates are ingested. It can be combined with drugs of other types used for blood-sugar control.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved a drug called troglitazone (sold under the brand name Rezulin) that can resensitize the body to insulin. About 15 percent of patients involved in the testing of this drug no longer needed insulin shots once they started taking it. Most patients in the study still needed insulin, but required fewer injections. If you have type II diabetes, you may wish to consult your doctor about the possibility of trying this drug.
No matter what type of diabetes you have, it is important that you get regular eye examinations as well as special periodic blood and urine tests to screen for cholesterol and kidney changes.
- Diabetes: It provides medical information about diabetes disease including causes, symptoms, etc.
- Diabetes diet: It gives information and guidelines to choose your sample diet to eliminate your diabetes.
- Diabetes nutritions and supplements: This section provides comprehensive list of nutritional supplements for diabetes.
- Herbal treatment for diabetes: This section focuses on various traditional herbal treatments used to cure diabetes.
- Diabetes aromatherapy treatment: This section provides information about essential oils which are helpful to cure diabetes.