How to regulate your blood sugar levels 

The best way to keep blood sugar low is to eat a healthy diet and do regular exercise. Just 20 minutes of walking 4 or 5 times a week can do wonders for lowering blood sugar.

Eating a healthy diet is also very important. Do your best to limit the number of calories you eat each day. Put smaller portions of food on your plate and eat more slowly so that your body has a chance to let you know when it’s had enough to eat.

Often, diet and exercise alone are not enough to control blood sugar. In this case, medicine is needed to bring the blood sugar down further. Often pills are enough, but sometimes insulin injections are needed. If medicines to lower blood sugar are started, it is still very important to keep doing regular exercise and eating a healthy diet.

Another very important way to keep track of diabetes is with a blood test, which is called the “Hemoglobin A1c” test. This test is often abbreviated as “Hb A1c.” The Hb A1c test is a measure of what the average blood sugar has been over the past 3 months. It is thus a very powerful way to get an overall sense of how well diabetes has been controlled. Everyone with diabetes should have this test 2 to 4 times per year.

The only way to tell if kidney damage has occurred is to test the urine for protein. This should be done once per year.

The biggest risk to people with numbness from neuropathy is that they will injure their feet and will not be able to feel it. Such an injury can lead to ulcers or gangrene, and occasionally to amputation.

For this reason, it is very important that patients with neuropathy learn to take special care of their feet and wear the right shoes.

Diabetic retinopathy is caused by weakening and scarring of the blood vessels which lie on top of the retina, the thin lining at the back of the eye. It is caused by damage to the blood vessels from high blood sugar. Carefully controlling blood sugar can prevent diabetic retinopathy.

Hypoglycemia means low blood sugar. Most diabetes medicines work by lowering blood glucose - and glucose is another name for blood sugar. If you receive too much diabetes medicine, then your glucose can get too low.

Glucose is the primary source of energy for the brain. This is why hypoglycemia is a serious, potentially life-threatening problem. If the brain goes without glucose for too long, then brain cells can die, which can cause permanent brain damage or even death. It is therefore very important for you, your friends, and your family to be able to recognize the symptoms of hypoglycemia and to know what to do if hypoglycemia occurs.