Maintaining Normal Blood Sugar Levels for Good Health

Have you been experiencing odd symptoms that your doctor just can’t explain? Symptoms such as (but not limited to) feeling tired all the time, low energy, brain fog, feeling moody? Do you feel thirsty all the time or do you feel hungry even though you just ate? Are you overweight, have difficulty losing weight, have high cholesterol? These are just a few of the symptoms that are related to conditions caused by abnormal blood sugar levels.

When normal blood sugar levels are out of whack, even slightly, your health could be jeopardized. Serious conditions such as obesity, heart disease, stroke, syndrome x, type 2 diabetes, and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are linked to elevated blood sugar levels.

If you suspect that you have higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, and are worried about the health consequences, it is time to take care of yourself before serious health problems arise. However, if you suspect that you have a serious condition or have diabetes signs and symptoms, visit your doctor.

The best way to maintain normal blood sugar levels is through a low carbs diet and exercise.

Read the labels. It will surprise you to learn how much sugar is included in our food. Sugar has more than 50 names and is an ingredient in most processed foods. The most common forms of sugar to watch out for are corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, galactose, glucose, high fructose corn syrup, lactose, malt, maltodextrin, maltose, panocha, rice syrup, sucrose, and treacle, just to name a few.

Your diet needs be mainly low in carbohydrates and high in protein. The main source of your carbohydrates should be in the form of vegetables and some fruits. Berries are fruits that are low in carbohydrates and can be eaten freely.

Include “good” fats in your diet such as olive oil and coconut oil. Read package labels and avoid anything that has hydrogenated oil. Even if the package says it has “0 grams trans fats”, they are allowed up to .5 grams of trans fats per serving. This could add up significantly if the serving size is small.

Include a variety of whole grains in your diet. Don’t limit yourself to just wheat. Avoid or eliminate white foods: refined,white flour, white rice, pasta, and potatoes.

Snacking can maintain normal blood sugar levels, as long at they are healthy snacks. Nuts, especially almonds, are good snacks and can help to keep you from feeling hungry. Have a fresh supply of vegetables on hand such as celery, carrots, and broccoli. A celery stick spread with almond butter and topped with a few raisins makes a wonderful, healthy snack.

Exercise is the other side of the coin. “If exercise could be purchased in a pill, it would be the single most widely prescribed and beneficial medicine in the nation.” —Robert H. Butler. Please consult with your doctor before you begin any exercise program.

If you lead a sedentary lifestyle, start out slowly. Pick a good time of day that to schedule for regular exercise. The best way to make a habit is by doing the same thing at the same time. Make exercise fun. Invite a friend or listen to music or a book recording. Walking, swimming, and biking are all easy, affordable forms of exercise. Just get up and get outside. Gardening is even considered good exercise.

Whatever you choose to do to improve your health is to your advantage. Remember that to enjoy life and your loved ones, it is important to maintain normal blood sugar levels.

Technorati Tags: Diabetes Signs and Symptoms, Normal Blood Sugar Levels

Have you been to your dietician to check out what foods to eat in order to achieve normal blood sugar levels?

If you have, then you are amongst the lucky few of the world who have the priviledge of going to a dietician to seek advice regarding health foods for normal blood sugar levels.

Over here and in many parts of the world, dieticians are a ‘rarity’ and so we have to find out all we can from various online sources or health forums, regarding the dietary recommendations for type 2 diabetics.

There are many foods which are helpful and recommended by dieticians to help you achieve normal blood sugar levels. What are the basic guidelines which dieticians use before deciding what food you should or should not eat?

Food Guidelines to Normal Blood Sugar Levels:

Let’s now take a look at food lists commonly recommended by dieticians to help you achieve normal blood sugar levels:
Foods Recommended:
Brown Rice
Whole Wheat Spaghetti/Bread
Vegetables – especially those which are less starchy such as carrots, broccoli and spinach
Fish – no frying!
Lean meats -Remove skin from chicken, pork, turkey and etc. And again, no frying!
Non-fatty dairy products – for example low-fat milk, cheese, yoghurt

Foods Not Recommended:
Fats – all types of oily foods, butter, margarine, cream. If needed, use only limited amount of liquid oil for foods
Desserts and snacks – Yes, that includes your favourite cookies and cream, ice creams, high fat chocolates.

Please note that these are all just general guidelines. In order to best achieve normal blood sugar levels, you need to individualize your diet plan. In other words, you need a ‘tailor-made’ dietary plan because there’s no one plan which fits all. It requires a lot of motivation on your part and also help from loved ones and health care professionals to achieve long term normal blood sugar levels. I will explain more on this in a future topic.

Technorati Tags: Achieve Normal Blood Sugar Levels, Maintain Normal Blood Sugar Levels, Normal Blood Sugar Levels

According to the official recommendations by Diabetes UK and Diabetes Australia, in order to maintain normal blood sugar levels (among diabetics), the diet you eat must fulfill the following:

Technorati Tags: Maintaining Normal Blood Sugar Levels, Normal Blood Sugar Levels

Euglycaemia

Hope you know how to pronounce it. It isn’t too much of a tongue twister. The letters “Eu” means normal, whereas “glycaemia” means sugar in blood. A pretty sweet and concise word for normal blood sugar levels don’t you think so?

Anyway, it’s important to know this term because sometimes, your doctor may absent-mindedly refer to this term from time to time. And if you are shy like me, you might not ask for a clarification (for fear of appearing foolish) Or, probably you may stumble across journal articles which mention this term.

I stumbled across this term in a most interesting way.

I found a song written for it, found here at this site.

Great song: Ode to Euglycaemia

“Seasons of chills and sweaty weather!
Tempting carbohydrate treats of cream and crumb!
Conspiring to disrupt the careful regimen;
With ripest fruit Thou temptest our aplomb.
To savor apples crusted in sweet caramel!

We fill our tastebuds nary to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the pasta shells…”

And the song continues for a few more paragraphs. It’s quite an interesting read as it tells you about the ups and downs, problems surrounding the issue of maintaining normal blood sugar levels, and the daily temptations that a diabetic may face.

May you enjoy normal blood sugar levels always. If you can come up with another song/poem which is equally good or better, leave me a post and I will gladly post it up here, with due recognition.

Technorati Tags: Euglycaemia, Normal Blood Sugar Levels

Am I Having Normal Blood Sugar Levels? What are the Low Blood Sugar Symptoms and High Blood Sugar Symptoms?

In order to know for sure whether you have normal blood sugar levels, you need to test yourself. You can do this by a simple pin prick to the finger to draw blood that is read in a blood glucose meter. Keep in mind that these home devices usually read blood sugar levels at about 10% lower than in labs. You can also measure your blood sugar levels by using a non-invasive device that takes a reading through the skin.

However, not everyone has access to the pin prick blood sugar measurement. So how do you know whether you have normal blood sugar levels? Is there an easy way to confirm normal blood sugar levels? The answer is simple: Get to know low blood sugar symptoms as well as high blood sugar symptoms!

Low Blood Sugar Symptoms

Low blood sugar is also called hypoglycemia. You can recognize low blood sugar symptoms by paying attention to how you feel if you haven’t eaten enough, if you have over exerted yourself, or if you have had too much alcohol to drink. Low blood sugar symptoms are:

• Feeling hungry
• Feeling shaky
• Sweating
• Feelings of anxiety or nervousness
• Feeling weak
• Confusion
• Difficulty speaking

High Blood Sugar Symptoms

High blood sugar symptoms can point to potentially dangerous conditions.

If you have very high blood sugar levels (over 600 mg/dL), contact your doctor. This usually occurs with the elderly who may miss a dose of medication or have an illness. Some things to watch out for are:

• Dry mouth and extreme thirst
• Skin that feels quite warm, but not sweat
• Fever
• Confusion, or even hallucinations
• Feeling very sleepy
• Vision changes
• Weakness, usually on one side of the body

If you have a few of these symptoms for a few months already, contact your doctor, and drink plenty of water to keep yourself from getting dehydrated. It’s important to verify that you have normal blood sugar levels. It’s important to catch diabetes early on so that you can cure diabetes, as shown here.

Here are some recommended readings on normal blood sugar levels:

• Normal Blood Sugar Levels – what are normal blood sugar levels ? are you a diabetic ? what should be diabetes normal blood sugar levels for you so you can call yourself healthy and fit without any problems ?

• Normal Blood Sugar Levels In Your Body – Normal blood sugar levels in your body are essential for overall good health. Not having normal blood sugar levels in your body can lead to a number of.

• What are Normal Blood Sugar Levels – What are Normal Blood Sugar Levels? The question above is a often asked but the answers seem to differ depending on who you ask. So to make sure that we have the correct information, what follows below is an artcle which is based on …

Technorati Tags: High Blood Sugar Symptoms, Low Blood Sugar Symptoms, Normal Blood Sugar Levels

The criteria for diagnosing diabetes mellitus is as follows, according to the World Health Organization and National Diabetes Data Group:

• Symptoms of diabetes plus random blood sugar levels > 11.1 mmol/L (200 mg/dL)
• Fasting plasma sugar > 7.0 mmol/L (126 mg/dL)
• Two-hour plasma sugar > 11.1 mmol/L (200 mg/dL) during an oral glucose (sugar) tolerance test

You only need to fulfill one of those criteria once now, and once in another day to be diagnosed as having diabetes. Or you can be diagnosed as having diabetes by having really high blood sugar levels or having really bad symptoms of diabetes (such as diabetic coma or diabetic complications).

These cutoff point values of normal blood sugar levels are important to us because research has shown that persons with higher-than-normal blood sugar levels have exponential or tremendously increased risk of diabetes complications. These risks are dependent on two factors: The degree of severity of your higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, and the length of time you failed to maintain normal blood sugar levels.

Besides that, research has also shown that if you have a:

• Fasting blood sugar levels of 5.6-6.9 mmol/L (100–125 mg/dL) or
• 2-hour blood sugar levels of 7.8-11.1 mmol/L (140-199 mg/dL) during an oral glucose tolerance test

Then, it would mean that you are at 25-40% risk over the next 5 years of developing Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Besides, even at these levels, you already have higher risks of having cardiovascular diseases.

Do you already know what are your own blood sugar levels? It’s absolutely important to maintain normal blood sugar levels because of the many implications of diabetes mellitus, which we will go into later. If you have risks of having higher than normal blood sugar levels or if you are worried about having diabetes mellitus, go for a blood sugar test today!

For those who have higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, explore ways to achieve normal blood sugar levels here.

Technorati Tags: Blood Sugar Test, Normal Blood Sugar Levels, What Are Normal Blood Sugar Levels

Having normal blood sugar levels are critically important for people living with diabetes. Because of the nature of diabetes, ensuring long-term, normal blood sugar levels is the only way to prevent potentially dangerous health complications from arising. So, what is a normal blood sugar level?

There are many ways to define normal blood sugar levels,

1. To a medical student:
A normal blood sugar level is defined as: 
No symptoms of uncontrolled diabetes (for example polyuria, polydipsia, nocturia, fatigue, weight loss) +
Random plasma glucose level of <11.1mmol/L or a fasting plasma glucose level of < 5.6mmol/L

2. To a normal person with diabetes:
A normal blood sugar level should be around: 3.5 – 8 mmol/L

3. If you are a more careful person with diabetes:
A normal blood sugar level is ideally 6 mmol/L before eating, 4 – 7.7 mmol/L after eating

4. To some doctors:
Although ideally, a normal blood sugar level should follow those remembered by a strict medical student, acceptable normal blood sugar levels can sometimes vary according to individuals and is correlated with the diabetes log book and the HbA1c value. For example, in elderly patients, the normal blood sugar levels aimed for are higher than the levels aimed for younger patients because of the higher risks associated with low blood sugar levels.

As you can see, opinions of normal blood sugar levels can vary, depending on the person’s experience and the patient’s condition. However, your blood sugar levels should not vary too much from the standard definition, as there are many undesirable high blood sugar symptoms, low blood sugar symptoms and other health problems related to long term high blood sugar levels.

We will talk more about other related topics in the future. In the meantime, I urge you to follow this link to learn more about what you can do to maintain normal blood sugar levels.

Just as a side note:
Many people use the unit mg/dL instead of mmol/L, it’s easy to convert the values. Just multiply the value in mmol/L by 18 and you will get the answer in mg/dL.

Technorati Tags: Normal Blood Sugar Level, Normal Blood Sugar Levels, What Are Normal Blood Sugar Levels

The numbers of those without normal blood sugar levels are shocking.

1. Over the past twenty years, the worldwide numbers of people with diabetes has risen rapidly, from an estimated 30 million cases in 1985 to 177 million in 2000.

2. It is estimated that >360 million individuals will have diabetes by the year 2030.

3. Type 2 diabetes mellitus is becoming an epidemic in industrialized countries because of increasing obesity and reduced activity levels.

4. In 2005, the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated there was a shocking 20.8 million persons (7% of the population) with diabetes.

5. Also in 2005, the United States had approximately 1.5 million adults >20 years old newly diagnosed with diabetes.

6. It was estimated that in the United States ~30% of individuals with diabetes were undiagnosed.

7. In 2005, almost 10 out of 100 people above 20 years old living in the United States were thought to have diabetes. Almost 21 out of 100 people above 60 years old living in the United States were thought to have diabetes as well.

8. The number of people with diabetes is similar in both sexes but is slightly greater in men >60 years.

9. Diabetes Mellitus is listed as the 6th leading cause of death in the United States in 2002 (although it is likely that this Diabetes Mellitus is under-reported as the cause of death)

10. Worldwide, it has been estimated that diabetes mellitus is the 5th leading cause of death, resulting in 3 million deaths annually.

Seeing these staggering numbers, it’s natural to ask “How do I maintain normal blood sugar levels?”, “What are normal blood sugar levels” or even “Am I having a normal blood sugar level?”

I would love to go on and on about how to maintain normal blood sugar levels but let’s leave this to next time. You can find an article on “What are normal blood sugar levels” in my site.

For the sake of your loved ones, may you always have normal blood sugar levels. Find out more on proven methods to maintain normal blood sugar levels here.

Technorati Tags: Normal Blood Sugar Level, Normal Blood Sugar Levels, What Are Normal Blood Sugar Levels