The Best Apps For People With Diabetes

The Best Apps for People With Diabetes

F inding it hard to remember to log your blood sugar levels? Want a central place to store your data? For people with diabetes, technology can take out the guesswork. Read on for the latest in apps and other gadgets...
The best diabetes management is by the numbers: blood sugar readings, insulin doses and grams of carbs you’re consuming. That can overwhelm any diabetes patient.
But technology can help.
Need to record your blood glucose level? A wireless meter can do that. Want to know how many carbs are in that slice of pepperoni pizza? An app can tell you.
More than 29 million people in the U.S. are diagnosed with diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association (ADA). There’s no cure, so it’s crucial that people with diabetes deal with it daily. The more data they collect, the better their management of the disease.
Some people can log data with a simple paper logbook and pencil. But many can’t, won’t be bothered or just plain forget – and that can hinder treatment.
When patients forget to log blood glucose readings or don’t bring logbooks to appointments, time is wasted trying to have the patient recall the data, says Amy Aponick, a registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator at Shands, the University of Florida Diabetes Center of Excellence, in Gainesville. Continue reading

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Diabetes and Hot Flashes

If you’re a woman approaching or in menopause, hot flashes may be the bane of your existence. Those all-too-familiar bursts of heat can mean discomfort and much misery. Women who have diabetes may have hot flashes that can be linked with low blood sugars, too. Read on to learn more about hot flashes and what you can do to help keep them at bay.
What exactly are hot flashes?
Hot flashes are sudden feelings of intense warmth that can come on over a few minutes or, more likely, all of a sudden. They are often accompanied by other symptoms, such as redness of the face or neck, sweating, rapid heartbeat, headache, and then feeling chilled once the flash has passed.
“Night sweats,” or hot flashes that occur at night and result in excessive sweating, can be particularly disruptive to sleep. Recurring night sweats can lead to insomnia.
While hot flashes can occur in anyone for a variety of reasons, they’re very common in women who are approaching menopause (perimenopause) or who are menopausal. (Men can also have hot flashes due to androgen deprivation therapy.) There’s no rhyme or reason to them, either: they can vary in intensity, they can come and go quickly or linger, and they can persist for months or even for years. Hot flashes are also more likely to occur in women who are overweight or who smoke. African-American women are more likely to get hot flashes than Caucasian women; women of Asian descent are less likely to experience them.
What causes hot flashes?
The cause of hot flashes is somewhat of a mystery. However, scientists believe that they’re related to imb Continue reading

How we ‘fixed’ our diabetic dad – and saved his life

When their father, Geoff, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at the age of 50, brothers Ian and Anthony Whitington were not hugely surprised, and for 10 years, they drifted along and watched from the sidelines.
“Dad had always been the ‘big man’,” says Anthony, 39. “As kids, we thought it was funny. Dad could drink more than anyone, he could eat more than anyone. It was his identity. That’s our dad and that’s what he does.”
“As we got older, of course we worried,” adds Ian, 37. “But everyone around us would say, ‘If he doesn’t want to change, you can’t change him. He has to do it himself.’” So nothing much was done – and Geoff joined the 3.5m adults in the UK who manage their diabetes with ever-greater doses of medication and regular check-ups.
“We were all resigned to our family roles,” says Anthony. “I was a busy financial adviser with four kids of my own. Ian was a busy cameraman with jobs all over the world. Dad was a funny fat guy who drank too much.”
The wake-up calls were different for both of them. For Anthony, it was a family trip to Chessington zoo in 2013. By then, Geoff weighed 127kg (20 stone), had high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation (abnormal heart rhythm), plus everything diabetes could throw at him – a swollen prostate, poor circulation, ulcers on one foot and a bone deformity on the other.
“We were walking around this theme park when the bones collapsed through his foot,” says Anthony. “I remember him grabbing a railing, the blood in his sock, getting him back to the car. Suddenly, this thing that the d Continue reading

11 ways to start reversing type 2 diabetes today

Whether you have a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes or or you’ve been told you’re at risk, read on for 11 ways to start reversing the effects immediately.
Type 2 diabetes is reaching epidemic proportions. There are 3.9 million people living with diabetes – 90 per cent those of being affected by type 2 diabetes. Here’s another shocking statistic: 1 in 3 UK adults has prediabetes, the condition that precedes diabetes.
As you’ll soon see on BBC One’s Doctor in the House, it is entirely possible to both prevent as well as reverse type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately, a lot of the advice that is given for the condition is, in my opinion, unhelpful and misguided. Most people think of it as a blood sugar problem but this is the ultimate effect rather than the cause.
WHAT IS TYPE 2 DIABETES?
Type 2 diabetes is a condition that is characterised by chronically elevated blood sugar levels. However, the main cause as well as the driver for this condition is something called Insulin Resistance. When you eat certain foods, particularly refined carbohydrates, that food is converted to sugar inside your body. Your body’s way of dealing with this sugar is to produce a hormone called insulin. Insulin moves the sugar inside your cells so that it can be used for energy. Sounds great, right?
Well, yes and no. When working efficiently, this is a fantastic system that helps your body to function well. But when you have type 2 diabetes, prediabetes or significant abdominal obesity, that system does not work so well.
Eating too many refined carbohydrates elevates your insulin levels for long pe Continue reading

What Fruit Can You Eat If You Have Diabetes?

You may have heard at some point that you cannot eat fruit if you have diabetes. Perhaps someone even told you that watermelon and bananas are off limits because they are too sweet. Neither of these is entirely true. You can enjoy fruit, you simply need to make smart decisions about which fruits and how much you eat.
Fruits and Diabetes
Fruits have many health benefits and they can be beneficial to a diabetic diet if eaten in moderation.
The key to eating fruit is to make sure you eat the right kinds in the appropriate portions.
For instance, fruits contain fiber. Fiber can help prevent blood sugar spikes, pull cholesterol away from your heart, and help you feel full, causing you to eat less. Fruit is also an excellent source of vitamins and minerals, such as potassium, which can help reduce your blood pressure.
On the flip side, fruit is a carbohydrate and it contains a natural sugar called fructose. Carbohydrates, whether from bread, milk, yogurt, potatoes, or fruit, get broken down and turn into sugar or glucose. For this reason, it's recommended that people who have diabetes monitor how many carbohydrates they eat, including fruit servings.
When choosing fruit you'll want to take a few tips into consideration.
Avoid Dried Fruit and Fruit Juices
Dried fruit, especially if it is sweetened, is higher in carbohydrates per serving than natural whole fruit.
It also contains more sugar because sugars are added to flavor it and can be lower in fiber if the skin has been removed. Just two tablespoons of raisins (1 ounce) will cost you: 100 calories, 23 grams carbohydrate, and 18 Continue reading