Step 4: You are in charge - design a treatment plan

The goal of diabetes treatment is to maintain blood glucose at normal or near-normal levels.

This is the key that will keep you healthy and prevent long-term complications, such as heart disease, nerve problems, and eye problems.

By taking charge, you will feel better and healthier.

Let's design an action plan for your own self-care. Here are the basic components:

• Monitor your blood sugar.
• Work with a registered dietitian to find a meal plan that works for you.
• Lose weight or maintain your already healthy weight.
• Become more physically active and fit.
• Take oral medication or insulin if necessary.
• Make a plan to stop using tobacco as soon as possible if you use it now, or do not start.
• Discuss with your doctor starting aspirin or a cholestrol medicine to help prevent cardiovascular problems.
• Find out your 10-year risk for coronary heart disease. Consider taking a cholesterol medicine if you need to. If you already have heart disease, a beta-blocker may be prescribed.
• Get your kidney function checked every year. An ACE inhibitor may be recommended to prevent or slow the effects of diabetes on your kidneys.
• Have a basic neurological exam every year.
• Take care of your feet. Have your health care provider carefully examine them at least once a year.
• Get the influenza vaccine each year and the Pneumovax once with a booster in 5 years. Recently, a hepatitis vaccine has also been recommended for people with diabetes. Talk to your health care provider.
• Get your eyes checked yearly by an eye care professional.
• See your primary doctor about every 3 - 4 months, or more frequently if your plan is not working. You can also consult with an endocrinologist (diabetes specialist).

The next few steps of this guide describe the initial components in more detail. Remind yourself that you don't have to work on every step all at once. Taking small steps over time will get you to your goal.

Also remember that you are not alone. You are the most important person in this plan, but your doctor and other members of your health care team (such as a diabetes educator, a nurse, and a registered dietitian) are involved in your health care and will help you.

National Diabetes Fact Sheet

This is the official Fact Sheet developed jointly by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the American Diabetes Association, and other partners. The Fact Sheet is the authoritative source of information, statistics, and national estimates on diabetes in the United States.

The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. No warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, is made as to the accuracy, reliability, timeliness, or correctness of any translations made by a third-party service of the information provided herein into any other language.

© 1997- A.D.A.M., a business unit of Ebix, Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.

All content on this site including text, images, graphics, audio, video, data, metadata, and compilations is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may view the content for personal, noncommercial use. Any other use requires prior written consent from Ebix. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, publish, reverse-engineer, adapt, modify, store beyond ordinary browser caching, index, mine, scrape, or create derivative works from this content. You may not use automated tools to access or extract content, including to create embeddings, vectors, datasets, or indexes for retrieval systems. Use of any content for training, fine-tuning, calibrating, testing, evaluating, or improving AI systems of any kind is prohibited without express written consent. This includes large language models, machine learning models, neural networks, generative systems, retrieval-augmented systems, and any software that ingests content to produce outputs. Any unauthorized use of the content including AI-related use is a violation of our rights and may result in legal action, damages, and statutory penalties to the fullest extent permitted by law. Ebix reserves the right to enforce its rights through legal, technological, and contractual measures.

© 1997- All rights reserved.