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Top 10 Ways To Lower Blood Sugar – For People With Type 2 Diabetes
August 2, 2017
- Stay hydrated. My favorite drinks to help keep your BG in check are: water, unsweetened tea (vanilla cinnamon or tahitian hazelnut or blueberry), zevia (no artificial sweetener or sugar, soda), and water kefir
- Walk or move for 10 minutes after you eat. The worst thing you can do is sit and watch TV or read after you eat, move for 10-15 minutes. You could walk around inside your house, put laundry away, take a walk in the neighborhood, have a kitchen dance party, or march in place the 1st 10 minutes of your fave TV show. Anything counts as long as you are moving continuously.
- Do a quick inventory to see if you are as consistent with your meds as you planned to be. If not, come up with a better plan to work them into your schedule, better yet, into your body!
- Not on meds or hoping to get off meds? Check your diet QUALITY. It really matters. You deserve Nordstrom, not The Dollar Store. Don’t go cheap on your food. This is what fuels you, make it high quality. When you provide your body with quality fuel, it shows by lowering your blood sugar.
- Mindfulness. Are you paying attention to your food? You can’t be buying high quality food, then ignore it while you watch TV or work at the computer. Pay attention to how your food tastes, how it makes you feel and when you’ve had enough. Sometimes that “barometer of fullness” gets thrown off when you have diabetes, so it’s even more important to be mindful.
- Check in with yourself. Are you in pain, are you sick, do you have a tooth ache or infection. These are all things that can make your blood sugar go higher. Often times people are given steroids to help with inflammation, these can skyrocket your blood sugars. Talk to your doctor about any problems and make a plan to get yourself feeling better.
- Investigate. Try a technique called paired testing. Check your sugar before you eat and again 2 hours after. Write down what you ate at that meal. If your sugar went up 30-50 (or so) points, you are on track, if it increased more than that, then you need to change the quality/quantity of what you ate or you need a medication adjustment, or more movement after you eat.
- Phone a friend. Find someone to talk to. It’s important to have a person who supports you and helps you deal with stress. Meditation, coloring, petting/walking your pet, and deep breathing are other ways to decrease stress.
- Consider cutting back or getting rid of sweet drinks. The fastest way to increase your blood sugar is to drink something that is sweetened with sugar. Fruit juice, soda/pop, energy drinks, sports drinks, pretty much any sweet drink that contains calories will cause a quick rise in blood sugar.
- Last, but certainly not least…..FIBER! When you increase the fiber content in your diet, gradually over time, to a goal of 25-35g per day, you will see an overall lowering of your blood sugar. Fiber does not have a significant impact on blood sugar, it makes you feel full and also helps create healthy gut bacteria! Foods high in fiber are fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, lentils, flaxseed, chia seeds, and nuts. Make sure your grains that you eat are “whole” grains.
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Angela Manderfeld, RD
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