The Importance of Watching Your Blood Sugar During Viral Outbreaks

Most diabetics are already aware of how important it is for them to keep track of their blood sugar. Making a few wrong moves can have some serious implications, and it can leave you feeling weak, exhausted, and can lead to some pretty serious medical problems.

However, keeping track of your blood sugar during a viral outbreak adds a whole new layer of importance, because that is the last time that you’d want to have an incident. One reason it’s so important to keep track of your blood sugar is that if your blood sugar gets way too high, you might have to go to the hospital or the doctor’s office.

During a viral outbreak, this is the last place that you want to go, especially with an underlying condition like diabetes. Chances are that location has been processing tons of patients with the virus, and you run a much higher risk of infection.

Typically, those with conditions like diabetes get hit harder by viruses anyway, but when you’re going there with high blood sugar already, it can be even worse, since your body is already dealing with its own problems. 

You need to exercise extreme caution when going to the hospital if your blood sugar gets too high. Another complication that can stem from having too high or too low blood sugar is that you may end up having symptoms that go in line with the virus that’s spreading around. 

You might start to feel sick and dizzy, or have splitting headaches and accidentally assume that you caught the virus. Letting your blood sugar get out of control can actually damage your immune system and make it work less efficiently than it was previously. 

Your immune system relies on your body getting just the right amounts of nutrients, vitamins, and minerals so that it can work properly. All of those nutrients are used in different ways by different immune cells, so if you’re eating improperly and letting your blood sugar get out of control, you also may not be getting the nutrients that you need in the first place, leading to a weaker immune system that’s more susceptible to the virus. 

During virus outbreaks, it’s crucial that you eat healthily to maintain your immune system and also keep consistent track of your blood sugar so that you don’t end up having to go to the hospital and expose yourself. 

Vitamin C Is a Natural Barrier for Diabetics Against Viruses

Vitamin C is an incredibly important part of your immune system and your health in general. Vitamin C deficit once frequently caused a disease known as scurvy, but low vitamin C can also cause you to have a much weaker immune system among a bunch of other issues.

Most people associate vitamin C with citrus fruits, such as lemons, limes, oranges, and more. While those are good sources of vitamin C, they’re also high in sugars, making them a poor option for most diabetics.

You might think that the next best option is to take supplement pills, but there’s another fruit out there that can give you more than enough vitamin C. Bell peppers are low in sugars and carbs, but have even more vitamin C than citrus fruits.

In fact, as little as one cup of bell peppers can get you more than 100% of your daily value of vitamin C. Vitamin C is important for your immune system because it helps with the production and function of many different immune system cells.

Without it, you may either produce weak immune cells or very few immune cells. It has also been shown to help decrease your chances of getting a few different types of cancer.

This vitamin doesn’t just help with your immune system, though. It’s also very helpful for diabetics in general, and that’s for a few different reasons. One of the most pressing reasons is that it helps manage your blood glucose levels, which is naturally very important for diabetics. 

It can also help keep your blood pressure under control in many situations, something that those with type 2 diabetes experience rather often. One of the more unconventional benefits of vitamin C is that it helps with skincare. 

Surprisingly enough, it was found to help people develop clearer skin when they were getting enough of it. This might be more pertinent to diabetics since they often struggle with skin problems as a result of their conditions. 

Bell peppers can be added to almost any food, whether it be on the side, mixed in, or as a snack eaten all on its own. They’re readily available at most grocery stores or local farmer’s markets, and they’re absolutely great for your health. 

Try mixing things up by adding them into whatever you’re having for dinner as soon as you can, because the more vitamin C you can get, the better.

Frequent Doctor’s Visits Put Diabetics at Risk with Their Weakened Immune System

If you have diabetes, you should know that your immune system is weaker due to your condition. Without a strong immune system, you’re going to be a lot more susceptible to getting sick, and when you do get sick, it’s going to hit you harder than it would someone else.

This is why you need to minimize your visits to the doctor if at all possible. Of course in cases of emergency you’re going to have to go to the doctor. When your blood sugar spikes too high, you need to see a medical professional to get the help you need.

However, you want to do everything you can to avoid that happening so that you don’t have to go to the doctor as much as you might normally. Doctor’s offices and hospitals are already houses for hotbeds for germs and diseases.

Despite their best efforts to sanitize them thoroughly, sick patients are still constantly walking in and out while spreading their disease around through surfaces or through the air.

The reason that diabetes affects your immune system has to do with the higher blood sugar levels. High blood sugar allows infections to spread and grow much faster than normal, making it much harder for your immune system to deal with, which leads to you getting sicker more often.

Another issue that diabetes poses for your immune system is the reduced blood flow and poor circulation throughout your body. Your white blood cells need to come in contact with the virus to detect it and to signal your body about it, but with poor blood flow, there’s a much lower chance of that happening.

This leads to viruses being able to take root and spread without your body even noticing until it’s too late. By the time it’s caught, the virus has already spread significantly, and it’ll be a much harder fight for your immune system because it hasn’t had time to prepare.

You may also know that diabetes impairs some of your nervous system, leading to more numbness in some areas. This numbness may cause a small injury to go unnoticed, such as a minor cut, which can then easily get infected all without you knowing.

By visiting doctor’s offices and hospitals frequently, you’re going to be exposing yourself to a lot of different diseases and infectious microbes that could all easily spread and get you sick, especially if you’re diabetic.

Diabetics Need to Improve Their Sleep to Fortify Their Immune System

One of the biggest problems with diabetes is that it can have many negative effects on your sleep. It’s been estimated that at least 1/3 of all diabetics experience sleep problems as a result of their condition, ranging from things like restless motion up to severe sleep apnea.

While not getting enough sleep is hard enough on its own, it can also harm your immune system and body, making you much more prone to sickness. Sleep is incredibly important for your body in so many different ways.

It’s your body’s time for recovery, and while it may seem like you’re resting, your body is actually very busy making repairs while you’re asleep. Many of these processes can only really be done during sleep, so if you’re not getting enough, you’re going to cut them off and leave yourself not fully restored.

For example, antibodies, T-cells, and certain kinds of cytokines are made by your body during sleep. All of these are important components of your immune system, so if you don’t get an ample amount of sleep so that your body can stock up on them, you’re going to have a lowered immune system.
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A weakened immune system won’t even be the worst of your problems if you’re not getting enough sleep. Studies have found that those who don’t get enough sleep are more prone to high blood pressure, weight gain, heart disease, and more. 

Since diabetics already struggle with some of those, you really don’t want to skimp out on sleep and make it any worse. The problem is that while the issues caused by a lack of sleep are particularly harmful for diabetics, it’s diabetics who struggle with sleep the most. 

One of the most common things that prevents diabetics from getting enough sleep is sleep apnea, in which your breathing pattern is messed up while you’re sleeping leading to snoring and poor sleep.

In order to improve your sleep, there are a couple of things that you can do. First, you should have a consistent bed time that you stick with, instead of changing the time you go to sleep each night. 

Second, if you have a particular condition that prevents your sleep, you should look into certain devices that can help. For example, CPAP machines can help those with sleep apnea sleep soundly, and those with restless legs or arms can use a weighted blanket to prevent spasms

How Diabetics Can Use Vitamin E to Ward Off Viruses

For diabetics, watching what you eat is an extremely important part of daily life. You have to carefully monitor your blood glucose levels and keep them balanced, otherwise you risk having levels that are too high or too low, which can lead to some serious health problems.

Diabetics are at higher risk when it comes to contracting viruses, so it’s important that they boost their immune systems while still keeping their blood sugar in check. One thing you’ll need to help boost your immune system is vitamin E.

The main draw of vitamin E is that it’s a really good antioxidant. Antioxidants essentially protect your cells from things that might cause cancer, such as UV radiation or second hand smoke.

Antioxidants also help reduce your chances of developing cardiovascular diseases, which are very dangerous. In addition to its antioxidant properties, vitamin E also provides your body with necessary resources that it needs to have a well-functioning immune system.

You can think of your immune system as a type of network spanning throughout your body. The cells all need to be able to communicate with each other in order to spot viruses early and converge on them quickly.

Without proper communication between cells, viruses can easily take hold in your body and start to spread. This leads to your body having a harder time getting rid of it, which can mean worse symptoms and a longer time spent being sick.

With a properly functioning immune system, your body should have a much better time eliminating the virus when it’s first spotted. In order to improve your vitamin E intake, you need to start eating certain foods, but if you’re diabetic, you need to be choosing ones that won’t interfere with your blood sugar levels.

For this, a great option to consider is walnuts. Walnuts give you a nice vitamin E boost that can help your immune system, but they’re low in carbs. One cup of them only contains about 4 grams of carbs.

They’re mostly comprised of protein and healthy fats, instead. You want to be sure you’re getting regular raw walnuts, though, because some can come with additional flavors and stuff on top of them.

Having some walnuts with your lunch or dinner can be a great way to get some additional immune boosting benefits while still staying well within your limits as a diabetic, allowing you to stay healthy in more ways than one. 

How Hyperglycemia Impairs a Diabetic’s Immune System

Hyperglycemia, also known as high blood sugar, is a condition often found in diabetics that can have a number of adverse effects. Diabetes impairs your body’s ability to naturally produce enough insulin, which is what handles sugar in your blood and breaks it down as needed.

However, if you have low insulin, your body won’t be able to process it and you’ll have excessive blood sugar, leading to hyperglycemia. You may have heard before that diabetics are at a much higher risk of infections, because their immune systems are compromised.

However, very few people know why exactly your body is more prone to disease as a diabetic. To understand why, you must first have a clear understanding of the way your immune system works.

While your immune system is very complex and widespread, you could say there are two main components of your body that keep you safe from infections: the cells that signal that there’s a disease, and the cells that remove the disease.

When a disease enters your body, it releases a signal in the bloodstream that signals that it needs help. When an immune cell comes by and picks up that signal, it then moves to the site of the infection and consumes it, breaking the disease down and disposing of it elsewhere to be filtered out of your body.

However, this process is very delicate. The chemical signals need to reach the cells, and the cells must be able to move to the site of the infection, and then they must be able to reach the actual disease cells.

All of these can be impaired by high blood sugar. First, the excess sugar may block the signals from reaching the immune cell in the first place, causing it to pass by without thinking that anything is wrong.

If it does pick up the signal, it needs to be able to move to the infected area without being blocked. Again, the excessive sugar can impede it from moving to the right spot. And finally, even if it does make it to the infected area, it may be blocked there by sugar anyway, leaving it unable to deal with the infection.

By keeping your blood sugar in check, you’re able to prevent the obstruction of your immune system, allowing it to easily sort out the virus in your body. With high blood sugar, any diseases that may not have taken hold before will have a much better chance at causing damage. 

Low Carb Eating to Help Reverse Diabetes
Getting diagnosed with diabetes can feel like a huge shock – especially if you don’t know a lot about how to control or reverse the disease. It used to be that whenever someone was diagnosed, they simply took whatever treatment the doctor ordered.

Usually, this meant taking a pill designed to help lower the levels of blood sugar in your body. Today, however, well informed patients know that taking control of their health is a good route to take.

By being proactive, you can make lifestyle changes with how you to eat, exercise and de-stress to be proactive about your diabetes diagnosis. And medicine isn’t always your only option.

Why Are Carbs Dangerous for Diabetics?

Once you’re diagnosed, you might be told that you need to watch your carbohydrates. But, there’s a world of carbs out there and simply being told to watch your carb intake isn’t helpful enough.

You need to know why carbs can be dangerous for those who have diabetes. There are different kinds of carbs. You can have simple carbs or complex carbs. These carbs are processed by your body to turn into glucose, which is how your body gets the fuel that it needs to run on.

Without enough of the right carbs, you won’t have any energy, but with the wrong kinds of carbs, you end up with fatigue, very high blood sugar levels and if you have a lifestyle of eating of the wrong kinds of carbs, this can lead to damage within your organs.

When you eat foods that are refined, it sends your blood sugar higher. You’ll feel great for a little while, but then you’ll realize that you’re hungry again not long after.

Some carbs don’t have enough benefit to make them worth eating. Foods have a glycemic rating. The higher the glycemic rating, the more dangerous it can be for diabetes because you can end up with highs, then sudden drops in sugar.

Most people assume that these dangerous carbs are things like the white flour foods. Items like white rice, white potatoes, white bread, and junk food like cakes, cookies and chips.

But there are some carbs that might look good and seem healthy but because they have a high glycemic rating, they can drive up your blood sugar. An example of this is corn flakes.

This food ranks at 93 on the index for a serving. The closer a carb is to 100 on the index, the worse the food is for someone with diabetes. A serving of graham crackers is a 74 on the glycemic index but an apple is only 39.

If a carbohydrate is simple, it’s dangerous. Because it has a simple amount of sugar molecules, your body can break that carb down too fast, offering you little in the way of energy or nutrition.

When you look at carbs, you want to look at two things. The food’s sugar level and the fiber level. A food can have a lot of sugar – such as fruit – but because fruit is high in fiber, it won’t break down as fast. This means you won’t get those sudden swings in your glucose level...

How a Low Carb Diet Works

Going on a low carb diet means that you’re making food changes in your life. It means that you’re avoiding the high fat, sugar-loaded foods that contain a lot of carbs.

Not only will you be able to reverse those diabetic numbers, but you’ll end up feeling better and having more energy because you won’t be putting the wrong foods into your body.

A low carb diet means that you’re limiting the amount of carbohydrates that you consume. You’ll be getting rid of foods that are starchy and putting in their place foods that are higher in fiber rather than carbs.

Instead of reaching for a candy bar or some crackers, you can have a fruit or vegetables. You’ll end up losing weight, too – which also helps you deal with a diagnosis of diabetes....

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Pay Special Attention to Your Feet as a Diabetic

Diabetics experience a wide range of problems associated with the disease all over their body, but some parts of the body are more severely affected than others. Namely, the feet are a major source of danger for almost all diabetics, both type 1 and 2.

One of the more common foot-based afflictions associated with diabetes is what’s known as neuropathy. Neuropathy is the damaging of the nerves, and while this happens all over your body, it seems to affect the feet of diabetics worse than it does other parts of the body.

When your feet and legs are hit with neuropathy, a wide variety of problems arise. First, you might lose feeling in your feet. This might not sound all that serious at first, apart from being an inconvenience, but it’s very serious.

If you sustain any injuries to your feet and aren’t able to feel it, they can get infected and become very hard to treat if you don’t notice it. Due to this potential nerve damage, it’s important that diabetics check on their feet frequently to make sure there are no unnoticed cuts, scrapes, or punctures, because these can all lead to nasty wounds when infected.

Even if these wounds are noticed, another danger lurks with diabetes, which is significantly slower wound healing. Due to the high levels of sugar in the blood, your body doesn’t have the same kind of blood flow that it would in a non-diabetic, which makes wounds heal slower.

This means that even if you catch a cut in time, you have to keep it clean and make sure it doesn’t get infected, because it will take some time for that cut to go away. You should also keep track of anything like blisters, sores, or anything that can cause the inside of your foot to be exposed.

Make sure you take good care of your feet by cleaning them regularly, to avoid any chance of infection. Also be sure to get a good, comfortable pair of shoes. Poorly fitted shoes or shoes that are in bad condition can easily lead to blisters, and if you wear the same shoes a lot, be sure to wash them every now and then so they’re not cultivating bacteria.

If at any point you get a severe cut or one that isn’t healing properly, immediately contact your doctor so they can help you out. They have experience helping wounds heal faster and in a more sanitary environment.

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What Can I Eat as a Diabetic?

After being diagnosed with diabetes, the first thing you’re more likely instructed on is what you can and can’t eat. So much stress is placed on what you can’t eat, and if you had a diet mostly consisting of those food items, you’d be left a bit lost on what’s left for you to eat.

For diabetics, the best rule of thumb is to stay away from foods that are heavily processed and sugar-heavy. This much is fairly common knowledge, especially among the diabetic community.

This means you shouldn’t load up on things like cereal, fries, sweets, white bread, soda, and more. For many people, though, some of these items are major parts of their diets, unhealthy as they may be.

This makes getting used to diabetes really difficult for those people, because on top of the new lifestyle changes of exercise and keeping track of blood sugar levels, they now have to completely change their eating habits.

Foods that are safe for diabetics aren’t as hard to come by as they may seem at first. One great option is certain fruits and vegetables. These two food groups have a ton of variety, so you’re sure to find at least one thing that you like among them.

However, be sure you’re getting the right kinds of fruits and veggies. You want your fruits and vegetables to be fresh, ideally. This doesn’t mean that they have to have been picked within the last 24 hours, but just don’t get anything canned or processed with heavy syrup.

Also, don’t assume that things are okay for diabetics just because they contain fruit. Things like fruit punch, juice, and jellies are all very poor choices for a diabetic because they contain high levels of sugar.

The other food group that will be your main source of food as a diabetic will be grains. Many of us are already familiar with this category in the form of foods like rice, bread, and more.

Much like fruit, not all grains are healthy for diabetics. Try to stay away from white, or processed, grains. You instead want products that are whole grain, like brown rice, whole grain bread, and oatmeal.

These two food groups alone give you a pretty decent selection of options to work with. In the morning, you might be able to have oatmeal with berries for breakfast. In the afternoon, you could have a sandwich made from whole wheat bread, some meat, and some vegetables, and in the evening for dinner, some brown rice and vegetables.

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Understanding a Diabetes Diagnosis

Diabetes is a very difficult thing to deal with when you first get diagnosed with it. It may seem unfair, it may seem like too much, and it can all just seem very confusing. The best thing you can do is take a deep breath, understand what you’re dealing with, and then take the first steps towards addressing the condition.

Technically speaking, diabetes is a medical issue in which your blood sugar levels are too high due to a lack of insulin. Insulin is a hormone that breaks down sugar in your blood and distributes the molecules to cells that use it for energy.

Without insulin, the sugar in your blood won’t be properly broken down, and can lead to some severe complications if it’s not taken care of. In the case of the less common type 1 diabetes, typically discovered at a young age, your body’s immune system fails to recognize the parts of your pancreas that produce insulin as a part of you, and attack it.

This renders your body unable to produce insulin from that point forward, and this damage is permanent. Type 2 diabetes is a bit different. Type 2 diabetics can produce insulin just fine, but their bodies just don’t use it as they should, rendering their existing insulin less effective.

This form of diabetes usually develops much later in life than type 1, and is also far more common. This can cause damage to your body in a variety of ways. The excess sugar in your blood can damage the walls of blood vessels as it flows through your body, leading to nerve damage, loss of eyesight, and even increased risk of infections.

Typically, you’ll end up having to administer artificial insulin to yourself, while also keeping track of your glucose levels and meals. This sounds like an ordeal, and it first, it may feel that way.

However, there are many diabetics and doctors out there who have designed meal plans and provided people with means of easily keeping track of their blood sugar levels.

The best way to respond to a diabetes diagnosis is to get in the right mindset about it. It may be permanent, and it may be a huge hassle in terms of learning how to handle it, but there’s nothing you can do about that. What you can do instead is mitigate the effects of diabetes and make sure you live a longer, happier life by keeping the disease in check.