Q. Guidelines for Diabetic Patients for Healthy Coping?

Generally, a diabetic patient adapts to day to day stress effectively, as they accept their disease condition with the support of the family and friends. Positive thinking and accepting the situation can reduce the effect of stress both physically and mentally. Therefore regular exercises, modified diet, follow up and support of family and friends along with time management helps the patient to have a long and healthy life.

Following measures can reduce stress:

- Physical exercise improves muscle tone and control weight. Diabetic patient should do exercise for at least 30 minutes five days a week.

Patient can do the following:
- Deep breathing exercise
- Foot exercise
- Brisk walking
- Yoga

- Rest and sleep: A diabetic patient should take adequate rest and sleep. This helps the patient to refresh the body and relaxes the person both mentally and physically and the person is able to take decisions by using problem solving technique effectively as patient is relaxed and has no tension.

- Nutrition and diet: Patient should eat healthy balanced diet. Patient should follow the advices of the doctor to modify the diet and use exchange list to eat food items. Focus should be on eating more grains and increased consumption of fruits, vegetables.

- Social support: Family and friends are the important people around a diabetic patient to reduce stress. They should listen to the problem and provide social support during the period of stress.

- Time management: The management of time for meals, sleep, rest and exercises are found to cause less stress. A priority list may be prepared for proper time distribution and time management.

- Support of a health worker: If due to some reason, a patient is not able to make changes as advised, or take insulin injection, or does not know how to handle hypoglycaemia, patient can take the help and guidance from the health worker. This will help to reduce tension and solutions can be found out.