Newly Diagnosed? Lower Your Blood Sugars 1-2-3

If you are newly diagnosed with diabetes, lowering your blood sugars may seem like an impossible task. The fact is, however, nearly all diabetics can lower their blood sugars as easy as 1-2-3. You may see results in as little as a day, or a week, and you have to be willing to test your blood sugars regularly, but blood sugar control is possible.

Here's step number one. You'll find it very easy to follow:

Step 1. Continue eating whatever you have been eating, but write everything down.

Write down absolutely everything you eat for 24 hours, preferably with some note of portion size (grams, ounces, tablespoons, cups, gallons, whatever the measurement may be).

The next step requires you begin your blood sugar testing.

Step 2. Try to duplicate yesterday's food intake, taking your blood sugar before you have eaten anything in the morning, and one hour and then two hours after every meal.

If you nibble all day, just take fasting and three more blood sugar readings during the day.

Now take a look at how food affects your blood sugars. The thing about diabetes diets is, no one diet works perfectly for everybody. Some people are especially sensitive to sugars. Some people have a relatively slow digestion so their post-prandial or after-meal spikes are low, but their fasting sugars are high. Look at your data to see how the food you eat affects you.

Then begin to make small changes.

Step 3. Try small changes in the foods you have been eating and note the changes in your blood sugars.

Here the key term is small. Small changes are changes you can stick to, and changes that won't cause major fluctuations in blood sugars that lead to premature use of drugs or increases or decreases in drug dosage. There might be some small change in your diet that will lead to control for you, or there might not. But you will never know unless you test your diet and test your blood sugars.

How will you know when you have cut back carbohydrates enough?

Most doctors recommend keeping blood sugars at the following levels:

100 mg/dl (5.5 mM) or lower fasting
140 mg/dl (7.5 mM) or lower one hour after a meal
120 mg/dl (6.5 mM) or lower two hours after a meal

If you are over 55, or if you have had undiagnosed diabetes for a long time, you may want to take your blood sugars two or three hours after a meal. Some people digest carbohydrates more slowly and reach blood sugar peaks later.

Once you have attained your goals, you may want to try adding back carbohydrates in small amounts to see if you can keep you blood sugars down. Remember, small inputs lead to small errors in blood sugar control. Test, test, and test some more, and you will get your blood sugars lower.