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If you have type 2 diabetes, understanding your condition and how to manage it is critical to getting and staying healthy. After all, diabetes is chronic, meaning that you’ll be living with it for the rest of your life. While that thought may seem overwhelming, there are many resources that can help you to control your blood sugar and live life to the fullest at the same time.
After a diabetes diagnosis, it can be helpful to meet with a diabetes care and education specialist who can provide the knowledge, skills, and support you need to meet your care goals. The more you know about your blood sugar, the better decisions you can confidently make to control it.
Understanding diabetes basics.
The pancreas produces a hormone called insulin, which helps regulate blood sugar. When your body doesn’t have enough insulin or that insulin isn’t being used efficiently, your blood sugars will rise. At a certain level, you are diagnosed with diabetes, or uncontrolled blood sugar. Left untreated, high blood sugar (hyperglycemia) can lead to diabetes and cause serious health concerns, including heart attack, stroke, or lower extremity amputations.
A diagnosis requires an A1C test, which measures your average blood sugar levels over the last 90 days. A normal blood sugar range is 4.0 to 5.6. If it’s 6.5 or greater, you have diabetes. What about people with results in the middle? Results between 5.7 and 6.4 indicate that your blood sugar is higher than it should be. Called “prediabetes,” these elevated numbers are a warning sign that it’s time to make lifestyle changes, such as losing weight, to reverse the condition.
1 in 3 adults in the U.S. have prediabetes, a precursor to diabetes.
Over 34 million people in the United States have diabetes, and the numbers continue to rise. Rates of prediabetes are even higher, with nearly 98 million American adults classified as prediabetic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Unfortunately, many more probably don’t even know they have elevated blood sugar.
While excessive thirst and urination may be symptoms of diabetes, many people with prediabetes have no signs of the condition. However, prediabetes and diabetes are often linked to obesity, age, family history, and inactivity. If you know you have risk factors of diabetes, you can discuss your diabetes risk with your doctor and understand when to start screening for the condition. Getting diagnosed with prediabetes before your blood sugar is high enough to lead to diabetes can help you get control of your health before the damage becomes irreversible.
What is diabetes education?
Diabetes education helps people with prediabetes or diabetes understand their condition and how to self-manage it in their day-to-day lives. Certified diabetes care and education specialists are specially-trained healthcare professionals who provide training, support, and resources so people can confidently overcome any challenges they encounter as they strive towards health.
What to expect from your diabetes educator.
In your first class or session with a diabetes care and education specialist, you can expect to learn the basics of diabetes, including:
- How to check your blood sugars and keep them within the target range
- Why exercise is an important part of managing your health
- Strategies for meal planning based on your nutritional needs
Working alongside your primary care doctor, dietitians, and other specialists, a diabetes educator can play a very important role in your treatment plan. Diabetes treatment often involves medication and routine blood sugar monitoring. However, there are also many different lifestyle changes that can help you to take control of your health and minimize the risk of further health concerns. Your diabetes educator may provide strategies around the following:
Personalized dietary recommendations.
Everyone should eat a balanced diet that contains lean proteins, complex carbohydrates, vegetables, fruit, and healthy fats. But, food plays an especially important role in managing diabetes because it affects your blood sugar levels. A diabetes educator can help you understand how certain foods—or when and how much you eat them—affects your health. However, it’s important to know that no food is completely off-limits. There are always ways to fit in your favorite foods. You just might need to eat it less frequently or in smaller portions.
Achieving and maintaining a healthy weight is an effective strategy that can help control blood sugar and decrease insulin resistance. A diabetes educator can help you learn how to count calories, plan meals, and approach food with sustainability in mind, so you can stick with it long-term.
Exercise advice.
Many people are conditioned to believe that exercise is about getting fit or losing weight. While losing weight can help you to get diabetes under control, exercise is important because it helps the body naturally lower blood sugar and fight insulin resistance. A diabetes educator can help you identify ways to increase your activity to at least 150 minutes of exercise per week. Traditional exercise like walking and biking is a great way to workout, but don’t discount other activities that require physical exertion, like gardening and cleaning.
Medication guidance.
Insulin and diabetes medications can also help to control blood sugar levels. There are many kinds of diabetes medicines that work in various ways and affect different parts of the body. A diabetes educator can help you understand how your prescription works, including your specific dosage and timing. They can also help you understand what to do if you accidentally forget to take it or are experiencing unwanted side effects.
Diabetes technology support.
The average patient with diabetes makes 180 additional decisions each day compared to someone without diabetes. From decisions about food to managing medication doses, timing, and refills, diabetes requires a lot of mental energy. Fortunately, the explosion of technology in diabetes care can help reduce the burden involved with managing diabetes. Over the last decade, diabetes technology has become easier to use, less invasive, and more widely available than ever before. These include:
- Smartphone apps to track meals or calculate insulin doses
- Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) that eliminate the need for painful and frequent finger sticks
- Smart insulin pens that connect to smartphones and track insulin dosing
- Automated insulin pumps
All of these technologies can be used to help reduce challenges in diabetes self-management. For some, the options can be overwhelming or intimidating unless they’ve met with a diabetes educator. A diabetes care and education specialist can help you identify your goal of using technology and match you with devices to show simulators of how they work. By being able to practice technology use on a particular device, patients feel more confident and empowered to use technology to manage their diabetes at home.
Watch our Facebook Live broadcast to learn more about diabetes education:
Is diabetes education covered by insurance?
Diabetes education coverage varies and it’s best to call your insurance provider to confirm your personal coverage. However, most insurance companies cover some amount of diabetes education, including Medicare and Medicaid. To get started, ask for a referral from your doctor and we’ll verify your insurance before calling to schedule an appointment.
Diabetes is a lifelong condition, but it doesn't have to keep you from doing—or eating—the things you love. A certified diabetes educator can play an integral part of your treatment team, empowering and equipping you to fit diabetes management into your everyday life.
For a diabetes education appointment, you can call…
443-777-6528 for MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center
443-444-4193 for MedStar Good Samaritan Hospital
410-554-4511 for MedStar Union Memorial Hospital
