Having type 2 diabetes actually places a big responsibility on you and this can be quite frightening at first. Fortunately the progress of diabetes is slow so this gives you time to educate yourself. When you do understand how to manage and control your type 2 diabetes it really just becomes routine… you will reach a point where you feel your life has balance again.

That is not to say there won’t be times when you are working hard at reducing your blood sugar levels that you will wonder… “is this working for me”? Or “do I need to change what I’m doing?”

There are five ways you can tell if your type 2 diabetes program is successful. Each one of them must show real progress; otherwise you risk regressing with your diabetic condition.

Here are 5 tips that will show you are on target:

1. Blood sugar levels: Your fasting blood sugar level needs to be in the normal range for a significant period of time in order for you to be considered ‘healed’. As long as your blood sugar levels are coming down to the normal range… fasting >80mg/dL (4.5mmol/L), post prandial or after eating 120mg to 140 mg/dL(6.7 to 7.8mmol/L), you are definitely making progress.

Note though that older people with type 2 diabetes may have different levels from those who are younger. Fasting blood sugar levels increase by 1 to 2mg/dL (.05 to.1mmol/L) per decade after the age of thirty, and post prandial levels can increase by 8 to 20mg/dL (.4 to 1mmol/L) per decade.

2. Hemoglobin A1c Level (HbA1c): When your HbA1c level falls into the normal range, you have achieved success. But don’t forget that while it is falling, you are on the right path. Many health care providers set goals for their patients that are 1% higher than normal. Anything less than 6% is considered normal, 6 to 8% is borderline, over 8% is high. Your goal really is to keep your HbA1c as close to normal as possible.

3. Weight: Any extra weight creates a condition known as insulin resistance where the insulin your body makes has a difficult time getting into your muscle cells. This can eventually wear out your pancreas and create a dependence on insulin injections. For every 10% of body weight you lose, you gain ground on beating your type 2 diabetes. Consider every 10% body weight loss as progress and achieving your ideal body weight as total success.

4. Blood pressure: When blood pressure is too high, there’s a risk of developing heart disease. High blood pressure in itself is a form of heart disease. Do you know what your blood pressure is? Ask your health care provider to tell you the next time it is taken. Get that blood pressure level down to normal… a reading less than 120/80 means you have a reduced risk of heart and kidney disease. You have achieved total success here in this category when your blood pressure is in the normal zone consistently for three months or longer. But if is high, give yourself a pat on the back when it starts lowering.

5. Exercise: Regular exercise can be a difficult habit for some people to develop. When you have a normal routine established, you have really achieved a success milestone in this area. Lack of physical activity can lead to weight gain and as you know, having too much weight is a big risk factor for type 2 diabetes. Inactivity also contributes to both insulin resistance and high blood sugar levels.

How do you feel and are you on target? Winning with type 2 diabetes is no mistake. You can become totally healthy once again… the way you felt when you received your type 2 diabetes diagnosis will be a thing of the past. You will feel great most days and love it!

If you have type 2 diabetes you can get normal blood glucose levels in a matter of days. By combining just 4 almost-forgotten, underrated, but time-tested and proven principles, anyone can safely lower and stabilize their blood glucose level. If you are willing to make a “superbowl” type effort you will be surprised at the results.

The four-step process that I describe here has leveled my hemoglobin A1c to 5.2% and helped me maintain a total cholesterol level of under 140 for over 3 years. This has eliminated my need for prescription medication to control my diabetes. It starts by changing the diet. Customize your own anti-diabetes diet to exclude saturated fats, and eliminate refined carbohydrates – such as white bread, white rice, and other white flour products. Simultaneously replace the refined carbs with high fiber complex carbohydrates – such as 100% wholewheat bread, wheat bran cereal, tubers, and lots of vegetables.

Can Elderly Men and Women Diabetics Help Their Uncertainty Of Dementia? And Can Changing The Diabetes Diet Help Reduce the Causes and Symptoms of Dementia?

Diabetes can affect the cognitive function in older men and women. In a recent issue from the Journal of Nutrition, Health And Aging (Volume 10, No. 4, 2006), researchers did reveal that postmenopausal women with markers for blood sugar that were 7% or higher, (meaning poorly controlled diabetes) had a fourfold greater peril of having mild cognitive impairment or dementia over four years compared to women with lower levels of all those markers.

Diabetics should keep their blood sugars less than 6% with the Hemoglobin A1C in order to help save conceptual dysfunction.

A possible justification for this kind of Proliferated Danger for dementia may be inflammation. People with diabetes and excessive abdominal fat may have more compounds that can cause an inflammatory response in the body.

Persons with dementia also show signs of inflammation in their brains. While it may be too soon to say that cutting inflammation will take from the Probability of dementia, you do want to consider the diet as an important part of diabetes. Cutting down on carbohydrates may lower this inflammatory response.

Diabetes and cognitive decline are well thought-out major health issues among the Older even in diabetic subjects without dementia, in cognitive domains, such as memory, attention and frontal lobe function (diabetic conceptual dysfunction).

Recent epidemiological: studies seem to suggest that diabetes heightens the exposure of vascular dementia, as well as Alzheimer’s disease.

There appears to be building up evidence that indicate biological links between brain glucose metabolism and cognitive decline. Once elderly diabetics had severe conceptual dysfunction, reversing it may be much extra tricky. Therefore, diabetic cognitive decline should be well thought-out in the long-term management of hyperglycemia.

Some diabetic patients that I have come in contact with that are older patients that have decreased cognitive ability usually have a direct correlation to not having their blood sugars under control.

Diabetic patients I do see that already have conceptual dysfunction are usually put on dementia medications Namenda and/or Aricept. New drugs are always being developed to help patients with dementia or Alzheimer’s whether related to diabetes or heart problems.

Good controlled blood sugar parameters are 80-120 mg/dl for FBS and 140-160 mg/dl for a Random Blood Sugar. But always consult your doctor as to what parameters he or she may suggest. Recognize it is carbohydrate foods, juice and junk foods that raise the blood sugars.

Yes, it can and here is how.

The most frequent cognitive deficits in persons with diabetes are:

o Slowing of information processing speed

o Slowing of motor speed

o Decreases in vocabulary and intelligence

o Lessening of attention span

o Decreases in motor strength

o Loss of memory

The single most important factor is glycemic or sugar control. Both too low (hypoglycemia) and too high (hyperglycemia) blood glucose can affect cognitive function. All of these above items improve with better glucose control.

Complications such as neuropathy (loss of feeling), retinopathy (loss of eye sight), and nephropathy (loss of kidney function) may take years to occur with diabetes. Cognitive deficits can occur much earlier (especially when your hemoglobin A1C is higher than 8.4%).

In elderly diabetic persons, this is especially true, with more than 10% showing at least some cognitive deficit due at least in part to poor blood sugar control.

Okay, so what can you do to keep your brain sharp? In other words, how do you keep all your marbles?
You keep your blood glucose levels as close to normal as possible. In keeping a tight control over your blood glucose you will sharpen your brain and prevent any further deterioration.

There are three main ways of doing this.

o The first is to control your diet by counting your carbohydrates. Your health care professional can tell you how many carbohydrates that you should eat.

o The second method is to exercise. Exercise has been proven over and over again to lower blood glucose (and it makes you feel better). Exercise can lower your blood glucose for hours to days (after your exercise is complete). Make sure to check your blood glucose both before and after you exercise. You want it to remain within a normal level. Your health care provider can tell you what normal levels are for you. Never start an exercise routine without checking with your health care provider.

o The third method is medications. Not all diabetics take medications but if you do, make sure you take them properly.

Diabetes is a condition brought about by the bodys inability to produce insulin or failure to respond to insulin properly. The major types of diabetes are Type 1 (commonly seen in the younger age groups), type 2 (common in the older age groups) and gestational diabetes (during pregnancy only). Among these three, type 2 diabetes is the most common and has the most number of cases worldwide. At present, the number of diabetes cases is increasing worldwide and threatens to reach pandemic proportions if not controlled.

The most common symptoms of diabetes are increased hunger, thirst and urine output. These are the usual reasons why someone goes to the Dr, this is particularly true in children. Maybe it is because it is easier to notice when a child is continually going to the bathroom.

Far less often people will also experience fatigue, nausea and vomiting. Blurring of vision and poor wound healing may also be indicative of errors in glucose metabolism. These last two usually occur after someone already knows they are diabetic.The poor wound healing can be a particular problem if you do any sort of job where you get incidental injuries which normally would be of no real consequence.

Diabetes is diagnosed by checking the levels of blood sugar. Random blood sugar (RBS), fasting blood sugar (FBS) and oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) are the diagnostic methods of choice. Among these, OGTT is usually used to confirm the results of both FBS and RBS. A fourth way of checking the levels is glycosylated hemoglobin or hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c).

Treatment for type 1 diabetes involved insulin injections, a diet tailored specifically for diabetics and adequate exercise. Type 2 diabetes is initially treated with exercise, weight reduction and proper diet. Oral medications are prescribed when the initial treatment fails to control the blood sugar levels. Insulin injections are added to the treatment regimen, if necessary.