Bang for Your Self-Management Buck

By David Spero You can't learn all the steps required to manage diabetes at once. Whether you're experienced or a newbie, what do you focus on now and what do you get to later? One way to decide is to ask, "What activity will give me the most bang for the buck?" "Bang for the buck" means comparing. How much benefit will you get out of something versus how much it will cost you? With self-management, the benefits can include feeling better, being healthier, and having lower glucose and blood pressure numbers. The costs can be financial (like paying for strips and drugs), effort (like learning to prepare new foods), time (like that spent exercising), and discomfort. William Polonsky, PhD, CDE, author of Diabetes Burnout, says it's best to make these decisions consciously. Most of us just fall toward the behavior that is easiest, or one that sounds attractive, without analyzing how much good the behavior actually does. Polonsky told us about a client named Roberto who wanted to improve his self-management. Given a choice about where to start, Roberto wanted to cut down on his tortilla intake. He was eating four to six tortillas with each meal. He thought he could try to cut them out completely, or at least reduce the amount to one to two with each meal. Now that sounds like a sensible idea. Six tortillas will raise your blood sugar, as Roberto had verified with blood glucose monitoring. So cutting them out would probably lower his A1C (a measure of glucose control over the previ...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs