Practice Good Sleep Hygiene
Poor sleeping habits and shift work link with an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Lack of sleep or a disrupted circadian rhythm seems to interfere with the bodys insulin response, leading to insulin resistance. The National Sleep Foundation also recommends several things to improve sleep hygiene, such as:
- Limiting daytime naps
- Avoiding caffeine and other stimulants close to bedtime
- Exercising during the day
- Avoiding heavy, fatty, or spicy foods close to bedtime
- Exposure to natural light during the day
- Establishing a relaxing bedtime routine
- Keeping the sleeping environment comfortable, e.g., temperature between 60-67 degrees, using white noise machines, etc.
Why Are Good Blood Sugar Levels Important
Healthy blood sugar levels are important for overall health. When blood sugar is high, it does damage to the entire body.
The longer the duration of high blood sugar , the higher risk of developing complications. This is why managing blood sugar in people with diabetes is the biggest goal. Low blood sugar is also dangerous.
Maintaining healthy blood sugar levels can help reduce the risk of developing diabetes later in life. People at increased risk of diabetes should be especially mindful of their blood sugar trends and get screened for prediabetes and diabetes regularly.
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Change Your Life Today And Reduce Your Risk Of Diabetes
Diabetes can be a massive burden on both your health and your wallet. But, maintaining normal blood sugar levels, managing your weight, and staying physically active are great ways to reduce your risk of developing diabetes.
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Urgent Advice: Call Your Care Team Immediately Or Get Help From Nhs 111 If:
You think you have high blood sugar and:
- you’re feeling sick, being sick or have stomach pain
- you’re breathing more quickly than usual or your heart is beating faster than usual
- you feel drowsy or are struggling to stay awake
- your breath has a fruity smell
- you feel confused or have difficulty concentrating
- you have a high level of ketones in your blood or pee
These could be signs you’re becoming seriously unwell.
You can call 111 or get help from 111 online.
Page last reviewed: 26 May 2022 Next review due: 26 May 2025
The Effects Of Diabetes On Your Body
When you hear the word diabetes, your first thought is likely about high blood sugar.
Blood sugar is an often-underestimated component of your health. When its out of balance over a long period of time, it could develop into diabetes.
Diabetes your bodys ability to produce or use insulin, a hormone that allows your body to turn glucose into energy.
Here are what symptoms may occur to your body when diabetes develops.
Normally after you eat or drink, your body will break down sugars from your food and use them for energy in your cells.
To accomplish this, your pancreas needs to produce a hormone called insulin. Insulin is what facilitates the process of pulling sugar from the blood and putting it in the cells for use, or energy.
If you have diabetes, your pancreas either produces too little insulin or none at all. The insulin cant be used effectively.
This allows blood glucose levels to rise while the rest of your cells are deprived of much-needed energy. This can lead to a wide variety of problems affecting nearly every major body system.
main types of diabetes: type 1 and type 2.
Type 1, also called juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes, is an immune system disorder. Your own immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, destroying your bodys ability to make insulin. With type 1 diabetes, you must take insulin to live. Most people receive their type 1 diagnosis as a child or young adult.
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Danger Zone High Blood Sugar Causes Effects And Suggestions
How well do you monitor your blood sugar levels? When was the last time your blood sugar was checked? These are key questions because your blood bio-markers are very vital statistics that reveal a lot about your state of health or potential for disease. Many people are unaware and uninformed about their blood biomarkers and the potential issues that high blood sugar can cause and contribute to. Our emotional, mental and physical well-being are directly linked to our blood sugar levels during the day and night.
One of the most dangerous conditions that can wreck your health is ongoing high blood sugar. Michael Morningstar
The goal of this blog is to offer education, information, and motivation to help you learn more about high blood sugar and how to avoid it or improve it naturally. Applying simple suggestions can help maintain a healthy lifestyle and blood sugar levels.
The Morningstar NEWS blog is passionate about helping you be more aware of the blood biomarkers that are key to your happiness and health. During these crazy coronavirus conditions, it is more important than ever to monitor your blood biomarkers such as blood sugar levels to optimize your health and immune functions. Maintaining healthy blood sugar levels is one of the most important steps you can take right now to enhance your emotional, mental and physical well-being.
Tips For Avoiding High And Low Blood Sugars
Walking the tightrope of a life with diabetes is not easy.
We need to strive every day to make sure that we dont let our blood sugars go too high or too low, and that can be exhausting.
Here are some strategies to help keep your blood sugar in balance:
- Eat similar foods and meals that have predictable carbohydrate counts
- Cook food at home, so you know all of the ingredients in your meal
- Keep to a routine, and eat at the same times every day
- Get enough sleep!
- Double-check your insulin doses to make sure youre not taking too much, nor too little
- If youve counted carbohydrates for a meal and dosed insulin for those carbohydrates, eat everything
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High Blood Sugar: Causes Complications And How To Lower Blood Sugar
Your body breaks down glucose for energy using the insulin produced by the pancreas. This is required for our bodies to function. Illness can have an impact on the way our pancreas functions. Read this to learn how high blood sugar can affect your health.
7 minute read
Your body requires energy to function, and this energy comes from food. Specifically, your body breaks down glucose for energy using the insulin produced by the pancreas.
Type 1 and type 2 diabetes cause impairment to this breakdown of sugar in the body, causing blood glucose levels to become irregular. When glucose is not broken down into energy, it can build up in the bloodstream and then becomes a health problem.
Your pancreas produces insulin, which breaks down glucose. With type 1 diabetes, the cells that produce insulin are mistakenly attacked by your immune system. As a result of this autoimmune condition, blood sugar levels can become dangerously high without intervention.
Type 2 diabetes occurs when your body no longer responds to insulin as well as it should and then also causes glucose to accumulate in the blood.
What Is A Dangerous Blood Sugar Reading And What Should You Do About It
How high is high and how low is low find out so that next time you know how to handle an emergency.
Your blood sugar levels dont stay constant throughout the day. They vary, rising and falling before and after you have a meal, exercise, or take your medication. People who do not have diabetes dont feel the difference very much, as their variations remain within a certain range. But if you have diabetes, you may unexpectedly experience blood glucose levels that are acutely higher or lower than usual, which can be dangerous.It is important for you to be able to recognise the symptoms of high blood sugar hyperglycaemia, and low blood sugar hypoglycaemia, and know how to treat them quickly before they can lead to disastrous complications. The best way to do this is to frequently self-monitor blood glucose levels with a glucometer.
According to Dr Ketan K Mehta, Consulting Physician, CardioPulmonologist & Diabetologist at Health Harmony, Mumbai, Blood sugar levels are a marker of diabetes complications. Too high or too low levels of blood sugar values are detrimental. An important aspect of managing diabetes is self-monitoring of blood sugar levels. But do more than only monitoring blood sugar levels. Go the extra mile and usesmartphone app-based programmes to keep track of your blood sugar levels and learn to get them under control by managing your diet, activity levels and weight.
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If You Regularly Have High Blood Sugar Levels
Having high blood sugar levels regularly is not something you should live with. This is because in the long-term it can increase your risk of developing diabetes complications, such as neuropathy and retinopathy.
If you notice that your blood sugar levels are often high, you should contact your diabetes healthcare team. They will review your treatment and provide you with advice on how to get your blood sugar levels back within your target range. This advice may include increasing your medication.
In the video below, Lynsey talks to Khalida about feeling anxious after getting a high blood sugar level reading. If youre finding it hard to deal with similar feelings, weve got information on emotional health that you may find helpful.
How Does Blood Sugar Rise:
Blood sugar rises as a result of food, especially carbohydrates, being eaten, broken down, and absorbed into the system. Whenever carbohydrates are eaten they are in complex forms that need to be broken down into simpler more easily usable forms. After they have been broken down they are absorbed into the bloodstream and delivered to cells around the body. The more carbohydrates that are eaten at once, especially ones that digest extremely quickly, the higher your blood sugar will go.
This is especially true whenever you eat carbohydrates in isolation. If you do not eat carbohydrates without any fat or protein you will have a massive spike in blood sugar, leading to a massive spike of insulin, and then a rapid and significant dip in blood sugar leading to hypoglycemia and what we talked about above.
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How Do You Bring Your Sugar Level Down
15 Easy Ways to Lower Blood Sugar Levels Naturally Exercise regularly. Regular exercise can help you get to and maintain a moderate weight and increase insulin sensitivity. Manage your carb intake. Increase your fiber intake. Drink water and stay hydrated. Implement portion control. Choose foods with a low glycemic index. Manage stress levels. Monitor your blood sugar levels.
What Level Of Blood Sugar Is Dangerous
A lot is spoken about high blood sugar levels and ways to keep them in control. With the rising incidence of diabetes, many people are concerned about their sugar levels and wish to plan a routine that keeps their blood sugar levels with the normal range. So, what level of blood sugar is dangerous and how to bring it down quickly? This is a commonly asked question. Let us look at it in detail.
An ideal range of blood sugar level is 90-160. A level which points towards 160-240 is a called a very high level. Above 240 the diabetes is listed as out of control. And if you have a blood sugar level of 300 or up, remember its a medical emergency and you need to get consulted immediately.
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What Are The Symptoms Of Low Blood Sugar
- Difficulty speaking
- Muscle weakness
If you are experiencing an extremely low blood sugar, which is anything less than 40 mg/dL, that is not responding to fast-acting glucose or glucagon, and you have taken fast-acting insulin within the previous 2 hours, call 911 and seek immediate emergency medical attention.
This condition can be life-threatening if not treated.
The Dangers Of High Blood Sugar
Type 2 diabetes isn’t a formidable disease by mere coincidence. The main condition underlying diabetes is hyperglycemia, or chronically elevated levels of sugar circulating in the bloodstream. It’s this condition that drives the disease – overtime damaging the internal systems of the body in varied proportions.
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It’s important to clarify blood sugar is not harmful by nature. Circulating sugars in the blood function to supply different parts of the body with precious energy at the tissue and cellular levels. At baseline levels, blood sugar behaves exactly as it was intended to as determined by our physiology. Higher levels of blood sugar also have their significance, especially when this occurs following completion of physical activity. In this state the body is deprived of accessible nutrients that were expended during exercise . and the elevated levels aim to restore nutrient balance in an efficient, innocuous manner.
High blood sugar becomes a serious threat posing many dangers to the body when it’s elevated above normal measurements on a chronic basis. This is the foundation of Type 2 diabetes.
Unfortunately, this is only a short list of the consequences of high levels of sugar in the bloodstream of Type 2 diabetics.
Other complications include…
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Are Low Blood Sugar Levels Dangerous
Low blood sugar is called hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia occurs when blood sugar falls below 70 mg/dL. Low blood sugar is dangerous, as it can cause dizziness and fainting, which increases the risk of a fall. Prolonged periods of severe hypoglycemia can cause insulin shock. Insulin shock can be life-threatening and lead to coma and death if its not treated quickly.
The most common symptoms of hypoglycemia include:
- Feeling shaky and/or dizzy
Recent studies have associated severe hypoglycemia as a risk factor for dementia, falls, fractures, and heart attacks. Elderly people are at higher risk of hypoglycemia-related fractures thus, many healthcare providers are more lenient with blood sugar targets in older patients with diabetes.
People without diabetes can also develop hypoglycemia. Some people without diabetes produce too much insulin in response to eating, especially simple sugars like candy and juice. Reactive hypoglycemia usually occurs within a few hours after eating and can happen very quickly in some cases.
Alcohol can cause an increase in insulin secretion as well as interferes with the livers ability to create sugar , which can both cause hypoglycemia.
What Is Diabetic Ketoacidosis
When the body doesn’t have enough insulin, glucose stays in the blood and can’t get into the body’s cells to be used for energy. This can happen, for example, when someone skips doses of insulin or when the need for insulin suddenly increases and the doses are not adjusted.
When the body can’t use glucose for fuel, it starts to use fat. When this happens, chemicals called ketones are released into the blood. Some of these ketones, like extra glucose, pass out of the body through the urine.
High levels of ketones in the blood can be a problem because they cause the blood to become acidic. Too much acid in the blood throws off the body’s chemical balance and causes the symptoms listed below. In people with diabetes, this problem is called diabetic , or DKA. DKA is a very serious condition that can lead to coma or death if it’s not treated. The good news, though, is that it’s preventable and can be treated.
DKA happens more often in people with type 1 diabetes, but can sometimes also happen to those with type 2 diabetes.
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If You Have Chronic Complications
When you have one chronic complication, youre much more at risk of developing other complications of diabetes. So if your blood vessels are damaged in your feet for example, the damage can happen to other parts of your body like your kidneys and heart too. This means you need to stay on top of your health checks and blood sugar levels when youre managing other problems.
This is serious, thats why we want you to have all the facts so you can prevent complications from getting worse.
What Is The Link Between Diabetes Heart Disease And Stroke
High blood glucose from diabetes can damage your blood vessels and the nerves that control your heart and blood vessels. Over time, this damage can lead to heart disease.1
People with diabetes tend to develop heart disease at a younger age than people without diabetes. Adults with diabetes are nearly twice as likely to have heart disease or stroke as adults without diabetes.2,3
The good news is that the steps you take to manage your diabetes also help lower your chances of having heart disease or stroke.
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Suggestions For Better Blood Sugar Levels
There are many simple suggestions to help reduce your chances for high blood sugar and reduce it if you already have it:
- Alkaline beverages and foods can be helpful for your overall health and well-being.
- Acupressure, acupuncture, and Emotional Freedom Techniques are Energy Psychology therapies that help with better nutrition choices and emotional health.
- Buy a blood sugar diagnostic device and learn how to monitor it correctly and use it regularly.
- Eating good fats like avocado, coconut, nuts, olive oil, and seeds helps train your body to burn fat for fuel.
- Exercise consistently, regularly, and wisely. Learn to breathe and exercise efficiently so you can burn fat for fuel.
- Find more happiness, joy, and love in your life.
- Green plant-based nutrition is one of the best choices to consume. Healthy whole foods nutrition with abundant healthy fruits and vegetables can help maintain a healthy blood sugar level to stay happy and healthy.
- Intermittent fasting is fantastic for helping you be more metabolically fit and flexible as you burn fat for fuel. Time-restricted eating helps you be more metabolically flexible and train your body to burn fat for fuel.
- Meditation has been found to help curb cravings for sugary foods that are often caused by stress.
- Microbiome optimization is a great way to maintain better blood sugar levels.
- Organic plant-based whole foods are a great way to feed your body better foods.
- Reduce most forms of sugar from your meals.