A Focus on Heart Health Can Help You Manage Your Diabetes
The number of people diagnosed with diabetes continues to grow, and as each new person is diagnosed with the disease, they must learn how to manage it. Successfully managing your diabetes can thwart long term complications as well as help you live a healthy, fulfilling life.
One way to do that to get great results is to focus on heart health. By taking the necessary steps to keep your heart healthy, you can also keep your diabetes under control.
It’s a simple concept of just following a heart healthy lifestyle. By taking steps to ensure that you’re living in a way that protects your heart, you’ll also be doing what’s best for your diabetes management routine.
Those steps can be added to your life easily and you can do it one change at a time. By seamlessly adding these steps to your life, you’ll be able to see your glucose levels come down.
You’ll also discover that your body can process glucose better, that you have more energy and you may even reach the point where you can take less of your medication – if any is needed at all.
If you’re not already physically active, that’s your first step. You’ll need to make it a point of being physical as much as possible. Heart healthy exercises can include regimens based on aerobic exercises.
You can run, job or bike. But you can also participate in swimming or water aerobics. Working out at the gym using elliptical machines can also be good, heart healthy exercises.
You want to aim for at least 30 minutes of activity a day and if you can’t get it all in at once, break it up into 10 or 15 minute segments. Another part of a heart healthy lifestyle that can help you manage your diabetes is to focus on what you’re eating.
Don’t think of your meal plan as a diabetic diet because the word diet can cause a negative connotation in your mind. Instead, think of it as a lifestyle of winning choices – because when you eat healthy, both your heart and diabetes benefits.
If you’re overweight, take the necessary steps to shed those pounds. Being overweight raises your risks of heart related conditions or events. Diabetes is already linked to heart disease, so your risk is even higher.
But by following a heart healthy eating plan, you can protect your heart and control your diabetes at the same time. Cut out any habits that are bad for your heart. This would be things like not managing stress, smoking, not getting the right amount of sleep, drinking too much alcohol and eating too much salt.
Improving those areas also helps manage your diabetes. Regardless of how long you’ve had diabetes, keep in mind that it’s never too late to make changes to take care of your health.
