Living a Full Life With Diabetes
November is Diabetes Awareness Month! To get ready, we’d like to talk about living well with diabetes. Too often discussions about diabetes focus on the limitations, but the reality is that many diabetics live full, exciting lives. They travel, eat out, go backpacking — Living with diabetes doesn’t mean giving up your adventures.
According to the CDC, 9.4% of the U.S. population is currently living with diabetes and almost half of the U.S. is prediabetic. That’s a significant portion of the population living with the day-to-day reality of managing their blood sugar.
Thankfully, there’s a positive side to the growing prevalence of diabetes in the United States: Better tools to help manage it. Because so many people are living with diabetes, new approaches and products are always being developed to help diabetics live full, healthy lives.
Monitoring diabetes with wearables and apps
It’s common to feel overwhelmed after a diabetes diagnosis. The ongoing task of constantly monitoring so many aspects of diabetes at once can seem like too much to handle. Keeping up with blood glucose levels is particularly exhausting, and dealing with sore fingers from too many finger pricks gets old fast.
Better wearables are currently being developed as scientists work on creating glucose monitoring systems that don’t require painful finger pricks. In fact, there’s one wearable in development that could track blood sugar in hair follicle sweat, while another team of engineers is developing contact lenses that track blood glucose.
For now, though, there’s still plenty wearables can provide, without glucose readings. Wearables like, Apple Watch, can already be used to help you track your diabetes. Tracking your movement is critical to keeping your blood sugar stable. In addition, there are a number of apps designed for diabetes, some of which integrate with wearables.
Many good diabetes apps also track blood sugar, carbohydrates, and other diet factors. Some of highest rated diabetes apps apps come with a bit of coaching and education, others incorporate a social element to keep users motivated. There are different approaches to each one and what works for one diabetic might not work so well for someone else, so try out a few different apps and see how you like the features, controls, etc. There are so many apps out there these days that at least one will probably work well for you.
Managing diabetes in life’s chaos
Another big challenge in managing diabetes is dealing with all the unique circumstances and situations that inevitably arise thanks to the chaos of life. Diabetes is a chronic illness that is best managed with planning and stable routines, but life is full of surprises and sometimes it’s stick to a routine every single day. It can be overwhelming to try to consider breaking out of the normal day-to-day schedule and do something new when you’re barely making day work as it is.
One-on-one diabetes coaching can provide help you navigate the many unique scenarios that arise in life. Studies have shown diabetes coaching even helps people take their medications more consistently. Why? Because everyone living with diabetes is different with a unique life full of unexpected twists and turns. Diabetes coaches can help you develop personalized tools for better management, they can answer questions and help you anticipate and plan for issues that may arise. And, in the end, that makes it easier to stick to your routine and take medications on schedule.
If you have diabetes, the idea of traveling probably feels particularly daunting for all the same reasons. Vacations that used to be easy and delightful can seem burdensome while you try to consider all the variables of travel. How will you get the right food at the right time? If you use insulin, where will you store it? How will you make sure you get enough exercise? What if you need to buy medical supplies where you’re going? The list of potential issues to solve every day on vacation can feel endless, and just the thought of it can wear you down until you’re not sure you really want to travel in the first place.
That’s exactly why Laura Pandolfi started writing travel guide books for diabetics — She already has guides out for Cuba, France, Mexico, and Portugal. Guides for Vancouver, Toronto, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Vienna, Thailand, Bali, Costa Rica, Hawaii, San Francisco, and New York will be published next year.
Living with diabetes means trying to minimize the chaos in a very chaotic world, but it’s important to remember that you will come to understand your body and how it reacts with time. There are many ways to speed up that process and make it easier. Apps, wearables, guides, and one-on-one coaching can help. Diabetics can (and do!) live full lives. A diabetes diagnosis doesn’t mean your adventures are over, with time, practice, good medical providers, and the right tools, you don’t have to let diabetes slow you down.
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