Lifestyle Guide for Newly Diagnosed Diabetic

If you have just been diagnosed with diabetes and are scared to death…..don't panic….. there is an abundance of professional help available and some very reliable guides to vibrant lifestyles that manage diabetes and enhance your pleasure as well. This is not a sentence to miserable ill health and nasty tasting bland food. What you need to understand is that knowledge about your condition gives you control over it. Here are the steps to take if you have been newly diagnosed.

First you need to ask your doctor for all the facts about your specific type of diabetes and if you have other conditions that need attention at the same time. Other conditions that affect the outcome of diabetes or are affected by diabetes are:

1. Hypertension (high blood pressure)
2. Cardiac disease
3. Obesity
4. Renal disease and/or failure
5. Peripheral vascular disease
6. Retinopathy
7. Pancreatitis

Chances are that if you have diabetes you have other health issues also. My advice is still…. don't panic. Work with your doctor over the course of the next several months. He (or she) should be:

1. Instructing you to make regular appointments, especially in the beginning when you will need a lot of help and information
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2. He should refer you to an eye doctor for an exam that will check for the kind of eye damage that high blood sugars can cause. The eye problem is called retinopathy and can cause blindness. Keeping blood sugars at normal levels with oral medications or with insulin can prevent retinopathy.

3. She should take a really close look at your feet every time you come in so she can assess the amount of circulatory and nerve involvement. If you have foot problems she should refer you to a podiatrist immediately. Poor circulation and nerve damage caused by blood sugars that are out of control can cause sores on your feet or even dead tissue or gangrene. Look at your own feet every night and call your doctor immediately if you have a sore or black spots on your feet.