Diabetes can lead to vision problems, nerve damage, kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, and stroke, all of which can lead to a shorter life expectancy and lower quality of life. With so many complications linked to diabetes, it is in your best interest to prevent it if you don’t have it or regulate it if you have been diagnosed with it.
Lifestyle changes can help slow the progression of the disease or prevent it altogether. Below you will find some tips to help prevent or manage diabetes.
Try to Get Down to a Normal Weight
Losing weight is one of the best things you can do for your health. Visceral fat, which is fat that surrounds the organs in the belly, can contribute to insulin resistance. People who are of normal weight have a lower risk of diabetes. To get down to a normal weight, exercise and dietary changes are keys to success. Eating a balanced diet that consists of healthy plant foods, healthy fats, and complex carbs, and engaging in regular physical activity can help you reach your goal.
According to the American Diabetes Association, patients who have prediabetes can prevent the progression of the disease by losing at least 7% of their body weight. For a person who weighs 200 pounds, that is a 14-pound weight loss. For someone weighing 170 pounds, that’s about 12 pounds. Losing one to two pounds per week is a reasonable goal for someone looking to reduce diabetes risk, and it will improve other health metrics, too, such as blood pressure and blood cholesterol level.
Seek Help From a Medical Professional
If you are concerned about your diabetes risk or unsure of how to manage your condition, one of the best decisions you can make is to see a doctor. Chronic disease management is a type of service that you can get from a health care provider. Oftentimes, what prevents people from leading a healthy life is not knowing where to start, or starting but losing motivation somewhere along the way. What complicates it further is that stress and other illnesses can also affect blood sugar levels.
A doctor can help you with weight loss, eating healthy, planning meals, and starting an exercise program for the best results. They can also help you understand how other factors could contribute to the progression of diabetes.
Your doctor may recommend getting your blood sugar tested routinely with an A1c test to help with determining whether the changes are helping you reach your goals, so you can make adjustments to the program until you have gotten your blood glucose levels under control. Depending on your condition, the doctor may prescribe insulin to help control blood sugar.
Diabetes Management in Rochester, NY
At Cornerstone Urgent Care Center, our medical professionals can help you better manage diabetes. We not only give urgent treatment to patients with severe symptoms of high blood glucose, we also provide personalized chronic disease management services and educate our patients on how to reach their health goals. With pre-diabetes and diabetes, lifestyle changes can usually bring big changes to how you feel and your overall health.
Cornerstone Urgent Care Center is a walk-in clinic with urgent care and emergency medicine providers on staff. If you have any questions about how we can help you, call us today at (585) 207-0088. Otherwise, you can simply visit our clinic at 2968 Chili Ave, Rochester, NY 14624.
