American Diabetes Association

Making healthy food choices is an essential part of successful diabetes management. Cooking diabetes-friendly meals at home is a great way to ensure that you're eating nutritious food; avoiding preservatives and excess fat, sugar, and sodium; and controlling your portion sizes.If you've just been diagnosed with diabetes, you may be wondering where to start when it comes to eating well.

Diabetes is a disorder in which the amount of glucose in your blood is too high. Type 2 diabetes is a serious condition that can lead to complications down the road, so it's important to take charge of your diabetes care! In addition to following a diabetes meal plan, maintaining an active lifestyle, and taking prescribed medications, you need to be able to perform certain essential tasks and skills to keep your diabetes care on track.

When you're trying to keep fit and manage your Diabetes, you can do many different static stretches to flex your joints. Here are a few simple ones to get you started.Neck stretchIllustration provided by the American Diabetes Association and David Priess. Your neck is one of the main places you tense up when you’re stressed.

Many people who are stuck at home for one reason or another think they can't work on staying fit, but the truth is that you can get a stronger core and stay fitter without leaving home. You'd be amazed at how easy it is to get fit. Your body core — the muscles around your trunk and pelvis — is particularly important to keep strong so that you can go about your normal daily activities and prevent falls and injuries, particularly as you age.

People with type 2 diabetes have several things going on in their bodies with blood glucose, insulin, and other hormones: People with type 2 diabetes may not make as much insulin as they used to — or none at all. People with type 2 diabetes may not be as sensitive to the hormone insulin (called insulin resistance) as people who don’t have diabetes.

Pills aren’t the only option for people to lower their blood glucose. Patients have access to injected medications (other than insulin), which are injected under the skin with a needle. This is different from a pill that you pop in your mouth.There are two non-insulin classes of injected medication for type 2 diabetes: GLP-1 agonists and amylin analogs.

You may have heard the terms diabetes self-management plan or diabetes care plan. Both of these terms refer to how you take care of or manage your diabetes. Your plan takes into account your big-picture goals and your nitty-gritty choices each day.On the one hand, diabetes management is not a small endeavor. You’re the person most responsible for taking care of your diabetes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Cooking healthy meals is an essential skill to make good diabetes management easier. But there are days when eating at home just isn’t in the cards. Maybe you’re planning to go out to dinner with a group of friends, or you’re working late one evening and you won’t have the time or energy to cook when you get home.

Some people have symptoms of diabetes or prediabetes before they're diagnosed, but many more never have any or realize that any symptoms they're having are related to diabetes. You need to recognize diabetes symptoms, both the classic and the subtle ones, to ensure that you get the necessary tests.Annual checkups— particularly when you're getting older — that measure your fasting blood glucose are important.