Diabetes can't stop us having a healthy, happy life!
Living with diabetes can be challenging, but you can still lead a near normal life. Diet and lifestyle are key components in living healthily with diabetes.
Living with diabetes includes a plethora of information pages about the kind of things that you might need to know whilst living with diabetes.
Living your life with diabetes
Be it dealing with blood glucose meter problems, the contraceptive pill, how smoking affects diabetes or even how diabetes could affect your job - Living with Diabetes contains help and guides to steer you through.
Diet Guides
A healthy diet is crucial to good diabetes management
Effective management of diabetes cannot be achieved without an appropriate diet.
People with diabetes represent a large subsection of society and there will be range of variety in terms of dietary requirements from person to person.
As a result, there is no one diabetic diet that will work for everyone and people should pick a diet that matches their individual needs.
Ideally, patients with newly diagnosed diabetes should receive advice from a dietitian soon after diagnosis.
Which diet is right for me?
please see: www.diabetes.co.uk/diet-basics.html
Diabetes and Obesity
please see: www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-and-obesity.html
The number of obese people in the UK is forecast to rise by 73% over the next 2 decades
The UK is officially the 'fattest' country in Europe, with approximately 1 in 5 adults overweight and one in every 15 obese.
Over the next 20 years, the number of obese adults in the country is forecast to soar by a staggering 73% to 26 million people.
According to health experts, such a rise would result in more than a million extra cases of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.[10]
Obesity is also no longer a condition that just affects older people, although the likelihood does increase with age, and increasing numbers of young people have been diagnosed with obesity.
Preventing obesity:
The links between Obesity and type 2 diabetes are firmly established - without the intervention of a healthy diet and appropriate exercise, Obesity can lead to type 2 diabetes over a relatively short period of time.
The good news is that reducing your body weight, by even a small amount, can help improve your body's insulin sensitivity and lower your risk of developing cardiovascular and metabolic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and types of cancer.
According to the NHS, a 5% reduction in body weight followed up by regular moderate intensity exercise could reduce your type 2 diabetes risk by more than 50%.
Driving with Diabetes
Please see: www.diabetes.co.uk/driving-with-diabetes.html
You may need to inform the DVLA that you have diabetes
Having diabetes does not mean you cannot drive a car or a motorbike.
Given that your diabetes is well controlled, and your doctor states that you are safe to drive, there is no reason why you cannot have a driving licence or hang on to your existing licence.
Nonetheless, you may need to let your car insurance company and the Driving and Vehicle Licence Agency (DVLA) know that you have diabetes depending on your type of diabetes and how it is controlled.
You should also keep up to date with the latest DVLA guideline changes to driving with diabetes.