Diabetes Testing

Your Diabetes Testing Can be Pain-free with These New Lancets

You can use a lancet that can make your blood glucose testing painless. Finally.

Lancets are essential to diabetes management. But they don’t get the respect they deserve.

Many people with diabetes are attached to the blood glucose meters we need to use and don’t give a second thought to the lancets that we must rely on for the actual testing. This seems strange because the lancet is the point where diabetes management happens.

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Psychosocial

Nag Your Man to Diabetes Health?

You might try to convince your husband into doing what you think would help if you think that he should take better care of his diabetes. This convincing can quickly turn into what your husband might perceive as “nagging.”

Nagging might get him to shape up. But it’s likely that he will resent your interference and the quality of your marriage will suffer.

The “most surprising finding” of a study published in mid-2016 was that an increasingly rocky marriage can improve your man’s diabetes management, according to a Michigan State University press release.

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Diabetes Diet

Limit Selenium to Avoid Diabetes

Some health recommendations on the internet suggest that you take supplemental selenium. But if you do, a recent study shows that you could be at an increased risk of developing diabetes.

While a little selenium in our diet is essential, almost all Americans get much more than they need. The National Academy of Medicine sets the Recommended Dietary Allowance for selenium at 55 micrograms per day for both men and women.

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Psychosocial

Why and How to Fire Your Diabetes Doctor

Are you unhappy with the way your doctor deals with you? Maybe your doctor doesn’t listen to you or support your low-carb diet. Perhaps you’re tired of being scolded for noncompliance. Or maybe you just don’t like him or her.

You have a choice. When you realize that the relationship that you and your doctor have isn’t working, you have a decision to make.

Should I fire my doctor?

If you want to fire your doctor, you have two choices, and both of them work. You can tell him or her why you are dispensing with his or her services. Or if you tend to avoid confrontation, like I usually do, you can just find another doctor and walk away.

But I hope you won’t have to fire yours. Sharing your concerns about people’s behavior can help if they listen to you. Then, your words can encourage him or her to change.

“Some physicians are open to feedback and can change,” William Polonsky, Ph.D., told me when I met with him. Dr. Polonsky is the president of the Behavioral Diabetes Institute in San Diego and an associate clinical professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego. “Give them a chance,” he suggests.

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Diabetes Medication

Most People with Diabetes Should Stop Iron Supplements

When you have too much iron in your blood or stored elsewhere in your body might be why your blood glucose level is above normal. In fact, too much iron can even be why you got diabetes. Yet about one out of every five Americans regularly takes an iron supplement.

For years researchers have suspected that when your body accumulates too much iron you are at risk of a host of diseases, according to Berkeley Wellness. In addition to diabetes, iron overload is linked to colorectal cancer, high blood pressure, and hardening of the arteries, as well as to strokes, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Parkinson’s disease.

But only now do we have studies demonstrating the connection between excess iron and diabetes.

“Even mildly elevated body iron contributes to the prevalence and incidence of type 2 diabetes,” states the news release from the University of Eastern Finland announcing the publication of these studies.

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Diabetes Basics

What You Must Ask Your Diabetes Doctor

You need to be prepared to learn as much as you can in the typically short office visit when you go to a new doctor for the first time. Some people actually recommend that you go to your first appointment with a list of 19 or 20 questions to ask the doctor. Be sure to ask your most important ones first because getting answers to that many questions would take hours.

A typical appointment with a doctor in the U.S. is 20.5 minutes, according to a 2015 study. But consider yourself lucky if your appointment is even that long.

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