How People with Diabetes Can Improve Their Overall Wellness at Home

While living with diabetes can be difficult and feel restricting, there are many ways to make the condition more manageable if you tweak some basic elements of your at-home lifestyle. A true holistic approach to diabetes care doesn’t just include home monitoring (though it is important), but also requires a proper diet, a good amount of exercise, and a focus on overall mental health (as diabetes can be emotionally taxing). Here’s how you can boost your own self-care at home.


Change your diet

A poor diet is the number one contributing factor for diabetes. A good diet helps diabetes patients control blood sugar levels, maintain a healthy weight, and cut down the risk of diabetes-related complications like heart disease. One of the simplest changes you can make from the comfort of your own home is to focus on healthy eating.

Avoid high-cholesterol, high-saturated fat, and high-sodium foods. Limit your sugar intake. Fill your diet with fiber-rich foods, fish, whole grains, and as many vegetables as you can. Practicing healthy eating isn’t necessarily easy, but it is simple.

Learn how to get the most out of at-home exercise

You don’t need to join a gym to stay physically fit. In fact, you don’t even need to leaveyour house. You can achieve all of your weight loss and basic physical fitness goals from home if you know how to maximize your efforts. Combine cardio and strength-based workouts. Challenge yourself to beat your own previous efforts. Keep exercise logs and hold yourself accountable. Set a schedule and stick to it. Just because you’re exercising at home it doesn’t mean you should take a lax approach.

For total mind and body exercise, few things compare to yoga. Not only does yoga give you quite the workout, it also helps to boost mental health. Studies have found that people who practice mindfulness exercises tend to have healthier glucose levels. Make sure you invest in a quality yoga mat before starting a yoga routine, however, as they are crucial in protecting your body from pressure.

Invest in some home monitoring help

As Heart.org notes, the four critical things a person with diabetes needs to keep track of are their blood sugar, blood pressure, blood cholesterol, and weight. Technology has improved dramatically over the past decade, to the point at which it’s pretty easy to monitor all of these vital figures without much medical or technical know-how. Smartphone apps can help you keep track of it all while all-in-one blood test systems like the OneTouch Verio can give you all you need to know with a small blood sample. There are even skin patches that can automatically monitor all of your important levels for you – and they are becoming more widely accessible every year.

Join an online support group

From the comfort of your own home you can connect with other diabetics who can offer support and advice for dealing with the condition. The American Diabetes Association has an online support forum, for example. Here’s one of many chat rooms dedicated to diabetes patients. Sometimes all it takes to give yourself a better outlook on your own situation is to talk to someone who’s going through the same thing.

Nobody is in more control of your diabetes care than you, and everything starts at home. The major things you can do, today, to better improve your situation are giving your diet and exercise a retooling, making it easier for you to monitor your important vitals, and reaching out to those who share a similar experience.

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Photo Credit: Pixabay.com

Sources:  Lindsey M https://publichealthcorps.org/diabetes/