Diabetes Do's For A Healthy Lifestyle

Living with diabetes? Live a healthy, active life with up-to-the-second technology and tips

By The LifeMinute Team

April 8, 2016

The best advice on the newest technology and smartest tactics for monitoring diabetes from endocrinologist (and diabetes patient) Dr. Jeremy Pettus, endocrinologist at the University of California San Diego

Must-Have Monitoring

First things first: Monitoring diabetes is the first step toward controlling it. "The information gleaned from monitoring is the information you use to make decisions including your food choices, activity levels and medication doses. All of these are important to keep you healthy," says Dr. Pettus.

But there can be barriers associated with checking blood sugar. "One of those is that people might not always know what the result of blood sugar testing means," says the doctor. "So for example they might not know the difference between a blood sugar of 125 and 195 and if they need to take any action. This can be particularly important when there is low blood sugar. It's a dangerous situation that does require immediate attention."

Technology Advances

Today we are starting to apply what we know about how people process information into medical technology, according to the doctor. "So far example there is a new blood glucose meter called the OneTouch Verio Flex that uses color to help people understand the results. So when people test their blood sugar they get a color like blue, green or red that will indicate whether they are low or high. It is customizable for each patient with their healthcare provider," he says.

Many diabetes patients will be satisfied with the basic unit's simplicity, but for those that want to take it a step further, they can take advantage of the built-in Bluetooth technology. How does it work? When a patient tests, results wirelessly sync the information to their Apple or Android device and stores it in an app. When the patients clicks on an app they can immediately see an overview of how their blood sugars are doing, identify patterns, look at averages, and share this information with their healthcare provider. Most patients will prefer this to the previous method of data storage, which required the patient to log information into a logbook.

A Doctor's Advice

As someone who has struggled with Type 1 diabetes for twenty years, Dr. Pettus is in a unique position to speak as both a patient and a healthcare provider. "I really can't emphasize how important education surrounding diabetes is. And I urge people to get involved with numerous online communities or in-person communities to get more education about the disease and to join the diabetes community.

For example, I work for a not-for-profit organization called Taking Control of Your Diabetes that puts on national conferences to give information on education and empowerment directly to the people living with the disease."

For more information on these topics and taking control of your diabetes, you can to to TCOYD.org and for more information on OneTouch Verio Flex go to onetouch.com.

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