How Do You Keep Diabetes Logs?

By David Spero One of the most important self-management skills is keeping logs of health-related information. Do you do that? What do you keep records of? Are you consistent with logging, and does it help? I'm working a lot these days with people newly diagnosed with Type 2. I believe logging will help them understand how their bodies work and what affects their diabetes, but maybe I'm wrong. How can I help them start with logging, and should I? What should they log, and how can they do that? I'm asking for help because logging is a skill I'm terrible at. I trust my memory on things like what I ate, how far I could walk, how many times I fell, etc. It never works. Two months later, who can accurately remember what supplements they were taking or how many days they did their stretching exercises? You're just guessing most of the time, so you might miss important patterns that a good log would show. Most people with diabetes, if they monitor at home, at least record their blood glucose results. But do you also record what you ate, your activity, what medications and supplements you took? Do you keep track of how you feel, your energy levels and symptom levels? When you think about it, you could log so many different parts of your life. It all might be helpful, but it's also a lot of energy and time spent. I can't imagine many people doing it all. Do you think it's worth doing, or even possible? If you keep logs, how do you do it? I just use a big notebook and write down thi...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs