How Do Type 1 Diabetics Manage Their Blood Sugar?
Managing your blood sugar as a type 1 diabetic makes you make 180 more life-saving decisions per day. So, how do we do it? Read more to find out!
What is a Good Range for Blood Sugar?
I think a myth with blood sugar regulation is that anyone can keep their blood sugar like a straight line. Diabetic or not, every time you eat, your blood sugar raises, then lowers are insulin is produced or administered. A pretty normal range for a normal person is between 80 – 140 mg/dL before and after eating. For type 1 diabetics the range you want to be in is 80-130, but after eating keeping it under 180 is the goal. Most of the time it is pretty hard to do though. Unless you pre-bolus and really learn how different foods can affect your blood sugar. This- I am not perfect at. Even more so, I have really bad days and really good days.
Did you Know?
Did you know that there are so many different things that can affect your blood sugar? Some examples that raise it include sunburns, lack of sleep, skipping breakfast, early mornings, cold weather, stress, sickness, scar tissue, and periods. Some examples that lower it sometimes include alcohol, exercise, intramuscular insulin delivery, weather, and rage-bolus. Now that you know some of the things that affect blood sugar, I will help you guys out by explaining how we manage it, even with all the outside factors.
How Do Type 1 Diabetics Manage Their Blood Sugar
There are three main things you need to be able to do to manage your type 1 diabetes. You need to be able to monitor or check your blood sugar. You need to take insulin, and you need to count your carbs.
To monitor or check your blood sugar, I recommend a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) and a glucometer, the CGM provides a 24/7 look on what your bg is. The glucometer is for finger pricks to check if you feel off or feel the CGM is wrong.
As for insulin, there are multiple ways to administer it. Shots, Insulin pumps, and most recently inhalable insulin. I currently am on shots, so that involves, short-acting and long-acting insulin. I take insulin each time I eat, when my bg is high (over 180), and my long-acting insulin is taken in the morning. I am hoping to go on the insulin pump, this allows you a bit more freedom since it is connected to a system that you put in, so it can help regulate your bg! I do not know too much about inhalable insulin, but I think it is still used with either a pump or shots.
Counting carbs may feel like a lot, but once you get in the cycle, I feel most diabetics get pretty good at knowing how many carbs are in their food! When you eat out, you are able to ask the restaurant for a nutritional menu or simply look up the amount of carbs within your meal. This allows you to pre-bolus pretty easily while accounting for all of the carbs, preventing a high or low.
Lifestyle Can affect your Blood sugar?
Exercising is super helpful in maintaining good blood sugar plus it makes your mind happy! Even just a walk helps digestion and insulin resistance goes down too. Stress can affect your blood sugar, so making sure you have a good community, priorities right, and a bit of consistency can really help lower your stress levels. Lastly, I am sure we all know type 1 diabetes is not cause by excess sugar eating, but having balanced meals, also help with insulin sensitivity/resistance!
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Peace
Gracie
