Diet is NOT the Only Influencing Factor in Diabetes

People who do not have diabetes, work in the medical or research side of diabetes or simply those uneducated or inexperienced with diabetes may more often than not underestimate the seriousness of the illness and how it can both be influenced by and influence people who are diabetic. When I discuss my research with some of colleagues not familiar with the diabetes in detail, or with anybody unfamiliar with diabetes for that matter, I tend to get a the same response such as “well isn’t it just poor sugary diets?”, “If you control your eating and medication your fine” and “can there be so much research involved in diabetes? I mean what are the benefits of your research when it is just a sugar imbalance”. This for me is terribly frustrating and for people who live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year with diabetes this must become much more than frustrating. Some things that are important factors worth considering that will impact on diabetes are as follows.

Emotional Situation and Stress: Stress and emotions change for many different reasons. Work pressure, home life, romance, children and a host of other daily activities can create situations of stress that can severely alter your diabetes state.
Hormones: A physiological aspect that people always undermine is the role of hormones in diabetes. Exercise, sleep, diet, workload, stress all contribute to changing a variety of hormones on the body. These hormones can increase blood glucose, reduce blood glucose, inhibit the effectiveness of insulin etc. and can be very influential in diabetes. Things to note here are hormonal adaptions with aging and the ever changes physiological processes from puberty to menopause.
Medications: Using other medications, supplements, vitamin additives are among some of the most dangerous factors influencing diabetes and the impact of insulin. Ensure you speak with your endocrinologist or diabetes nurse before starting new medication or supplements to confirm they will not impact on your diabetes or diabetes medication.
Miscalculation: Undercounting for what you are eating can also cause you to have a high or low blood sugar depending on which way you miscalculated. So as you can tell, it isn’t because you were out with some friends shopping and saw that very special treat that you just had to have. Everything affects our numbers.