Living With Diabetes

If you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes, you will need to pay special attention to certain aspects of your lifestyle and health.

If you have diabetes, you should have regular eye tests. Watch a video about diabetic retinopathy.

Diabetes doesn't have to stop you from leading the life you want. Nor does it mean you'll necessarily have other serious health problems in the future.

With careful management you can ensure you control the condition and it doesn't control you. This will allow you to stay healthy, active and to live a full life.

Without taking these measures, you are putting yourself at an increased risk of health problems, which could force you to change your lifestyle entirely.

Structured education programmes can teach you more about managing diabetes. Learn more in diabetes education.

After diagnosis

When you were diagnosed, you should have been assigned to a diabetes care team who will have explained the most important aspects of managing your condition.

You may also have learned to monitor your blood glucose (sugar) level regularly, and to understand how it is affected by food and exercise.

If you need help to keep your blood glucose level stable, you may have been prescribed diabetes medication, or insulin to inject.

In order to stay well, it's important to use these aspects of your treatment properly. But it's also important you take other steps to help manage the condition and lower your risk of further health problems.

Learning to manage your diabetes takes time, patience and effort. You may also be coping with difficult emotions after diagnosis, such as anger, confusion or depression.

Diabetes health risks

Both type 1 and type 2 diabetes put you at increased risk of:

heart disease

stroke

circulation problems

nerve damage

foot ulcers

blindness, caused by diabetic retinopathy

kidney damage

skin lesions

damage to breast tissue in women

muscle-wasting and damage to ligaments and joints

Healthy living with diabetes

There's a lot you can do to minimise your risk of these problems.

First, it's important you take your insulin and other medicines properly.

As well as taking your medicines or insulin, there are a few key steps you can take to prevent or delay the health complications associated with diabetes.

Maintain a healthy weight – This will help control your blood glucose level, as well as your blood pressure and cholesterol. Learn more in our lose weight section.

Eat a healthy, balanced diet that’s low in fat, salt and sugar – This doesn’t mean you can never eat biscuits or cakes again, but try to eat sugary and fatty foods in moderation. Learn more in our food and diet section.

Don’t smoke – If you do smoke, find support to help you stop. Smoking increases your risk of heart disease and stroke even further. For help with giving up smoking, see our stop smoking section.

Get active for 30 minutes a day, five times a week – This helps you stay at a healthy weight and maintain good general health. It doesn’t have to be the gym: there are plenty of other ways to keep active, such as playing with your kids, gardening, or any activity that gently raises your heart rate. Learn more in the fitness section.

Check your feet every day – The nerve damage that can occur in diabetes most commonly affects feet. Learn more in diabetes and foot health.

Keep your appointments with your diabetes care team – Regular check-ups once every three months are an important part of managing your diabetes.

Causes of type 1 diabetes 

Type 1 diabetes occurs as a result of the body being unable to produce insulin, which moves glucose out of the blood and into your cells to be used for energy. 

Without insulin, your body will break down its own fat and muscle, resulting in weight loss. This can lead to a serious short-term condition called diabetic ketoacidosis, where the bloodstream becomes acidic and you develop dangerous levels of dehydration.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition, where the immune system (the body's natural defence against infection and illness) mistakes the cells in your pancreas as harmful and attacks them.

Treating type 1 Diabetes

It's important that diabetes is diagnosed as early as possible so that treatment can be started.

Diabetes can't be cured, but treatment aims to keep your blood glucose levels as normal as possible, and control your symptoms to prevent health problems developing later.

If you're diagnosed with diabetes, you'll be referred to a diabetes care team for specialist treatment and monitoring.

As your body can't produce insulin, you'll need regular insulin injections to keep your glucose levels normal. You'll be taught how to do this and how to match the insulin you inject to the food you eat, taking into account your blood glucose level and how much exercise you do. 

Insulin injections comes in several different forms, with each working slightly differently. Some last up to a whole day (long-acting), some last up to eight hours (short-acting) and some work quickly but don't last very long (rapid-acting). You'll most likely need a combination of different insulin preparations.

There are alternatives to insulin injections but they're only suitable for a small number of patients. They are:

• insulin pump therapy - where a small device that constantly pumps insulin (at a rate you control) into your bloodstream through a needle that's inserted under the skin 
• islet cell transplantation - where healthy insulin-producing cells from the pancreas of a deceased donor are implanted into the pancreas of someone with type 1 diabetes (read about the criteria for having an islet transplant) 
• a complete pancreas transplant 

developing type 2 diabetes is due to:

• increasing levels of obesity 
• a lack of exercise 
• increase in unhealthy diets 
• an ageing population 

Even if you feel healthy, you may have a higher than normal blood glucose level (pre-diabetes) and be at risk of getting the condition.

It's therefore important to take preventative measures by making any necessary lifestyle changes, such as eating more healthily, losing weight (if you're overweight) and becoming more physically active. 

Diabetes can cause serious long-term health problems. It's the most common cause of visual impairment and blindness in people of working age. It's also responsible for most cases of kidney failure and lower limb amputation (other than accidents).

People with diabetes are up to five times more likely to have cardiovascular disease and stroke than those without diabetes.

Although all adults are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a number of groups have a particularly high risk of developing the condition. 

Your risk of developing type 2 diabetes is increased if:

• you're over 40 years of age (over 25 if you're South Asian) 
• you have a close family member with diabetes (a parent, brother or sister) 
• you're overweight or obese, with a waist size of over 80cm (31.5 inches) for women and 94cm (37 inches) for men, or 89cm (35 inches) for South Asian men  
• you're of South Asian, Chinese, African-Caribbean or black African origin (even if you were born in the UK)  
• you've ever had a cardiovascular disease, such as a heart attack or stroke
• you're a woman with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and also overweight 
• you're a woman and you've had gestational diabetes or given birth to a baby of over 10 pounds  
• you have a severe mental health condition, such as depression, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and you're taking medication for it 
• you've been told you have impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glycaemia 

Treating type 2 diabetes

There is no cure for diabetes. However, treatment aims to keep your blood glucose levels as normal as possible, which will control your symptoms and minimise the risk of health problems developing later on.

If you're diagnosed with diabetes, you may be referred to a diabetes care team for specialist treatment, or your GP surgery may provide first-line diabetes care.

In some cases, it may be possible to control your diabetes symptoms by making changes to your lifestyle, such as eating a healthy diet and taking regular exercise (see below).

However, as type 2 diabetes is a progressive condition, you may eventually need to take medication to keep your blood glucose at normal levels. You may need to take tablets initially, but move on to injected therapies, such as insulin, at a later stage.

Causes of type 2 diabetes

Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas – a large gland located behind the stomach.

Insulin controls the amount of glucose in your blood. It moves glucose from the blood into your cells, where it's converted into energy.

In type 2 diabetes, not enough insulin is produced to maintain a normal blood glucose level (insulin deficiency), or your body is unable to use the insulin that's produced effectively. This is known as insulin resistance.

If you have type 2 diabetes, you will be advised to look after your health very carefully.

Caring for your health will also make treating your diabetes easier and minimise your risk of developing complications. You should:

• eat a healthy, balanced diet 
• lose weight (if you're overweight) and maintain a healthy weight  
• Stop smoking 
• drink alcohol in moderation 
• take plenty of regular exercise

It's seems that although scary at first, a diagnosis of diabetes is a manageable condition if you get the right help and support, sure lifestyle changes are a must but this could be a good thing, and yes you will have to change your diet, but hey this is also a good thing, we should all consider changing our lifestyles, if we smoke or drink to much, as well as our diets if we drink too many drinks with sugar in or eat too much fatty foods. 

If a relative is diagnosed with diabetes I think the whole family joining in with the changes would help a great deal, it would make the shopping easier for a start and on the grand scale it might bring the cases of diabetes down in the long term.