Prolonged elevated blood glucose levels is detrimental to your health and can cause various long term complications like blindness, kidney failure, amputation etc. Therefore, keeping your blood sugar levels low is important. This article shares with you a few ways to lower your blood sugar levels whether you are a diabetic or not.
1. Diet
Choose your meals based on the Glycemic Foods Index. Glycemic Index is a ranking of foods according to how fast the food can raise your blood sugar. Therefore, the lower the Glycemic index means a smaller rise in blood sugar and can help control blood glucose levels.
Some examples of low Glycemic Index or GI foods are pears, apples, oranges, peanuts, beans, oatmeal, chicken, fish. High GI foods include watermelon, potato, white rice, white bread and pastas.
Plan your meals to include more low Glycemic Index foods which will also keep you fuller for longer periods.
2. Exercise
Exercising is an activity you have to start right away. While you need not be going for really competitive sports like marathon or soccer, you will still need to exercise.
Taking a walk about thirty minutes a day is a good start and can help to lower blood sugar levels significantly and helps in weight loss too. In fact, many diabetics and pre diabetics have lower or completely remove the need for diabetic medication by exercising properly and regularly.
3. Lose weight
While the real cause of diabetes has not been determined yet, it has been closely linked to people who are overweight. In addition, being overweight can also lead to many other health issues apart from diabetes.
Therefore, it makes prefect sense for an overweight person, especially a diabetic, to lose that extra weight. It has been reported that by simply reducing your weight by about 5 to 10%, you can reduce your risk by about 50%.
4. Drinking Plain Water
The concentration of sugar in the blood is directly proportional to the amount of fluid consumed. Choose to drink sugar-free drinks and lots of plain water. When blood sugar levels are high, drinking plain water helps to dilute it too. As drinking can fill your stomach, it can help to control overeating and lower your blood sugar.
5. Spread Out Meals
Blood sugar levels can be lower by having more number of small meals at shorter intervals as compared to 3 large meals a day.
6. Monitor Blood Glucose Regularly
Constantly monitor of your blood glucose levels can help to keep sugars levels in check. When your blood glucose levels are high, eating less amount of food and choose food with lower Glycemic index can effectively lower your sugar levels immediately and in the long run also.
To avoid the serious complications of high blood sugar levels over time, learn how to lower sugar levels in your blood by practising the 6 ways described above. Apart from these, you ought to be aware of the signs of having too high or too low blood (Hyperglycemia vs Hypoglycemia) and have some sweets with you in case you suffer from low blood sugar.
To know more about how to cope with your diabetes, feel free to visit my diabetes site http://www.stopprediabetes.com and find out more on how to lower sugar levels in your blood.
Edwin Seow is the author of this article which may be used for reprint on your website provided all the links in the article be intact.
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