How Can Exercising And Eating Healthy Help With Insulin Levels

Diabetes is a disease that can greatly affect the quality of your life. Type 2 diabetes is a disease that affects more than 20 million people in the United States. However, with proper management and care, most people can live healthy lives without suffering from complications related to this disease.  In order for patients to maintain good blood sugar levels, they must exercise regularly and eat a well-balanced diet. Exercise is the most important thing you can do to help maintain your blood sugar levels. The key is to stay active, which means at least 30 minutes of exercise five days a week. A diet filled with high-fiber foods, lean protein, and plenty of fruits and vegetables will also help regulate insulin levels. This article will provide an overview of diabetes, pre-diabetes, and how exercising and eating healthy can help with insulin levels.

What Is Diabetes?

Diabetes is a disease that affects the way your body breaks down sugars and starches you eat. Rather than being digested, sugar and starch are broken down into glucose, a type of sugar in your blood. Glucose gives your cells energy to function properly. When you have diabetes, this process doesn’t work properly. 

Diabetes comes in two forms, type 1 and type 2. Type one is not preventable but does develop over time. As professionals at DiaBettr explain, type 2 can be prevented or even delayed by maintaining a healthy lifestyle, diet, and exercise routine. Read on to learn the benefits of exercising and eating healthy.

Pre-Diabetes

Even though it’s not diabetes, pre-diabetes can be dangerous if left undiagnosed. This is because the symptoms are often similar to those of regular diabetes and people assume that this is just a natural factor of aging or weight gain. In fact, more than half of the adults with pre-diabetes don’t know they have it. If left untreated, pre-diabetes can lead to type 2 diabetes within five years with 20% of people who live this way for 10 years or more.

It’s important to know the risks associated with not treating your pre-diabetes. Pre-diabetes can lead to serious health problems including kidney disease, stroke, heart disease, blindness, nerve damage, and amputation. This is why it’s important not only to educate yourself on diabetes but also pre-diabetes.

How Can Exercising Help With Insulin Levels?

Not only does exercise help your overall health, but it can also benefit your insulin levels. The more active you are, the better exercise routine you have, the better your body responds to insulin. This is beneficial for people who have pre-diabetes or diabetes because their bodies don’t respond properly to insulin and this interferes with sugar breakdown. Exercising regularly can help your body respond properly to insulin.

If you have diabetes, exercise can help keep your glucose levels in check so you won’t require as much insulin or other medications. This can also be helpful for people who have pre-diabetes because it helps the body control glucose levels naturally without medication. 

How Can Eating Healthy Help With Insulin Levels?

Eating healthy can also help you maintain or improve your insulin levels. Eating foods that are low in fat and high in fiber, along with whole grains, produce, fish, eggs, meat, beans, fruits, and vegetables can help control glucose levels so your body doesn’t have to work as hard to regulate these levels.

If you have diabetes or pre-diabetes, healthy eating can help control your blood sugar levels. This is because the foods you eat are broken down into glucose which the body uses for energy. Healthy eating helps maintain steady glucose levels so your body doesn’t have to work as hard to regulate these levels.

When To Seek Medical Care

It’s important to seek medical help if you suspect that your insulin levels are not as stable as they should be. There are a number of tests that can be run to check for diabetes and pre-diabetes including fasting glucose, random glucose, and hemoglobin A1c (HgbA1c) blood test. 

If you have symptoms similar to diabetes or pre-diabetes, it’s important not to self-diagnose. These symptoms include frequent urination, extreme thirst, and hunger, fatigue, unintentional weight loss, sores that don’t heal quickly, nausea and vomiting. However, just because you have some of these symptoms does not mean you have diabetes or pre-diabetes, so it’s important to seek medical help.

When To Seek Emergency Care

If you experience symptoms similar to those of diabetes or pre-diabetes and they do not improve with self-care like healthy eating and exercise, it’s important to seek emergency care. Symptoms may include fatigue, nausea, and vomiting, abdominal pain, trouble breathing, blurred vision, rapid heartbeat.

Another symptom of diabetes is nerve damage which can cause numbness or tingle in the hands and feet as well as loss of feeling. This may be a sign that your blood glucose levels are too high for too long which damages nerves. If you have this symptom, it’s important to seek emergency care.

What Are The Risks Associated With Not Eating Healthy And Not Exercising?

Many people try to ignore the effects of not eating healthy and not exercising, but this can end up having an effect on your insulin levels as well as your life expectancy.  Not only will your insulin levels surge and drop because of not exercising and eating healthy, but it also increases the risk of heart disease.

One study done at Harvard University found that people who were overweight were more likely to die from a heart problem than those who weren’t overweight. The reason for this is because if you are overweight or obese, you are said to have an increased risk for heart disease because of high cholesterol, high triglycerides, and high blood sugar. This will set you up to have insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, or pre-diabetes.

With diabetes or pre-diabetes, it’s essential to understand how these conditions affect your body so you can better manage them. Type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition that requires ongoing management. Pre-diabetes offers insight into your risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the future so you can take action now to prevent or delay symptoms. Being diagnosed with diabetes or pre-diabetes doesn’t have to mean the beginning of a negative, life-long journey. Knowledge is power and knowing what effect these conditions can have on your body and how you can manage them will give you the upper hand in controlling your symptoms.