Diabetes Mellitus - American Diabetes Association: Fill & Download for Free

You cannot manage your diabetes without antidiabetic medications, no matter how much of karela (bitter gourd), neem (indian lilac), methi (fenugeek) etc, you eat.Eating sweets doesn't cause diabetes. Although if you already have it or are predisposed to it then you should definitely cut down on your carbohydrates and fats (including sweets) to keep your blood sugar under check.Don't stop coming back to your doctor for follow up visits just because you have got better, especially in cases of chronic diseases.Same thing applies when your symptoms are not improving even after the prescribed treatment. See, human body is a very complex biological system and we doctors have got a lot of alternatives for a single ailment. So it's basically a “trial and error method” where we don't know beforehand about which medicine will work and in what dose, for a given individual. So give us some time before shuffling doctors like a pack of cards. Anyway the next doctor may again start from the scratch. 😉Food items are not inherently ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ in their nature. So neither eating citrus fruits/curd would make you catch cold or aggravate it, nor pulses/non-vegetarian items would worsen your abcesses or arthritis. Yes if you feel discomfort after any particular food item then you can certainly avoid it.EDIT-1:This is in response to a lot of hype in the comment section around the benefits of LCHF diet in diabetes mellitus. Also commonly known as keto-diet, low-carbohydrate high-fat (LCHF) diet is used by many as a means to short-term and rapid weight loss. It has shown to have some benefits in diabetes, refractory epilepsy etc in some studies, but the evidence for it is quite weak. It may have shown favourable results in blood sugar levels in some of the patients as mentioned by some of the readers, but those are only short lived. Keto diet is not feasible for long-term use because it is cumbersome to stick to a very restricted diet for such long periods especially in chronic life-long diseases like diabetes. Moreover it becomes very difficult for vegetarians to find sustainable options in the long run. Keto-diet is also shown to be associated with more frequent episodes of hypoglycaemia which is very detrimental for the health especially in diabetics. Although American Diabetes Association (ADA) mentions LCHF diet as one of the alternatives in the type of medical nutrition therapy (MNT) for diabetes but does not endorse it. It recommends carbohydrates to form 45-55% of the dietary intake with preferably low glycemic index carbs which are healthier. While in diabetes, saturated and trans fats are to be capped and only poly and mono unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs and MUFAs ) should be encouraged, most practitioners who prescribe LCHF don’t follow this and end up stuffing excess of ghee, butter and red meat into their patients. Mediterranean diet which is a healthier combination of various dietary constituents is a better option and should be encouraged, but definitely not in the absence of regular medical therapy for diabetes. 😉

Should I worry if glycohemoglobin (HbA1C) is 6.7?Glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) is an important indicator of long-term glucose levels and has been recommended for use in the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus (DM) by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and World Health Organization (WHO).HbA1c is created when glucose binds to hemoglobin, which is found in red blood cells.In Healthy PeopleIn healthy people, HbA1c values range between 4.0% and 5.6% (20 – 38 mmol/mol).Integrative medicine doctors often tighten those parameters to as low as 5.2% (33 mmol/mol) as prevention measures, though this is not part of international guidelines and isn’t supported by research.The normal range for HbA1c is 4 – 5.6% (20 – 38 mmol/mol) in healthy people; values between 5.7% and 6.4% (39 – 46 mmol/mol) point to prediabetes, while HbA1c over 6.5% (47 mmol/mol) may indicate diabetes.Healthy Stabilize Blood Glucose Levels - Click Here to Read

Steroid-induced diabetes mellitus is defined as an abnormal increase in blood glucose associated with the use of glucocorticoids in a patient with or without a prior history of diabetes mellitus. The criteria for diagnosing diabetes by the American Diabetes Association [2] is an 8 h fasting blood glucose ≥ 7.0 mmol/L (126 mg/dL), 2 h post 75 g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) ≥ 11.1 mmol/L (200 mg/dL), HbA1c ≥ 6.5% or in patients with symptoms of hyperglycemic, a random plasma glucose of ≥ 11.1 mmol/L (200 mg/dL).Diabetes-Medication-Type-2- Click Here to Read