Exercise for diabetes

My aunt was diagnosed with diabetes sometime recently. I think that it was somewhat unexpected. I've been researching about it a bit. I copied one of the articles I found informative below. I got her Wailana's yoga dvds. I know yoga helps people get healthy again, so I think this will help her get back to exercising.

Diabetes Plus Stress Can Equal High Blood Sugar

For most people, stress is simply annoying or unpleasant; for people with diabetes, it can have a direct impact on health. Stress hormones can cause blood sugar to rise and you may need more insulin or other medications to control blood sugar when you are under stress (being sick or physically injured can also do the same).

Your response to stress, however, can exacerbate the problem. If you skip meals, neglect exercise, or tend to eat poorly, your blood sugar may become too high or too low.

"There is a myth out there that it's all about food as to why the blood sugar rises," says Richard Hellman, MD, former president of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. The truth is that other factors play a role, he explains, including stress.

For example, if you're a schoolteacher who takes insulin at breakfast, a morning meeting with a difficult co-worker can affect the insulin's ability to control your blood sugar.

"That person will have, in many cases, a higher than normal glucose level at that time. Only part of it is due to what they ate," Dr. Hellman says. "(Another) part of it is due to the fact that their hormones are churning out adrenaline and other stress hormones."

If you're under stress, you may need to take more insulin to correct for extra-high blood sugar, or less if you change your behavior.

Stress can also affect lifestyle
While stress can cause blood sugar to go up it can also cause people to skip a workout or make poor food choices, notes Susan Guzman, PhD, senior psychologist with the Behavioral Diabetes Institute in San Diego.

"I think the bigger problem with stress is that you stop making time for exercise, you stop making time to test your blood sugar regularly, you stop making time for meal planning," Guzman says.

The best way to break that cycle, she explains, is to get back on track with your diabetes care—even if it's taking small steps, such as a 15-minute walk in the middle of the day.

Even if you're stressed and on a deadline crunch, it's not the time to "run to Denny's or to run to McDonald's," she says.

Guzman, who teaches a class on diabetes and depression, says being part of a group also helps alleviate anxiety for some people. "Just having a place to come and talk and feel supported and to know you're not alone in what you're feeling is so therapeutic," she says.

It's also a good reason to do yoga meditation with Wai Lana- as yoga meditation is one of the best, if not the best way to relieve stress.

Watch your sugar, for baby's sake

Do your yoga and drink to health with Wai Lana's Juice Book through pregnancy to keep problems like this far away!

Watch your sugar, for baby's sake

When 33-year-old Anita conceived, she was overjoyed. But the joy was tempered when, in the seventh month of pregnancy, diagnostic tests revealed
that she had diabetes. Both her parents were diabetic but this had not prepared her for her own condition.

“When I was carrying, I felt weak and heavy. That is when doctors discovered I had gestational diabetes,” she says.

Anita is hardly unusual. The incidence of gestational diabetes, caused by the hormones produced during pregnancy, has shot up in India from a mere 2% in 1980 to 17% today. This diabetes usually occurs between the 24th and 27th weeks. The pregnancy hormones reduce a woman’s sensitivity to insulin, sending blood sugar levels soaring.

What’s particularly alarming is that babies of affected mothers are more likely to be obese, both as children and adults. They are also more prone to diabetes later in life. The mother is at risk too because 30% of women who get gestational diabetes also develop maturity-onset or Type 2 diabetes seven to 10 years after the pregnancy.

Experts say that the spike in gestational diabetes parallels the recent rise in diabetes cases. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that India may see a rise in diabetes from 135 million cases in 1995 to 300 million in 2025 — a whopping 120% increase.

Asians are already regarded a high-risk group and have 11% more prevalence of gestational diabetes than the rest of the world, say experts. The global average is between 4-8%; in the US, it is 6%.
The rise of gestational diabetes cases in India was confirmed during a diabetes and pregnancy awareness project by Apollo Hospital, Chennai, in 2004.

The four-year project, which screened some 13,000 people in Tamil Nadu, revealed startling statistics, says Dr V Balaji, senior diabetologist at Apollo Hospitals. The results led to mandatory screening for glucose intolerance in pregnant women at all state government centres.

So what happens to a woman with gestational diabetes? Doctors say it affects the mother in late pregnancy. It could strike earlier if a woman has a family history of diabetes, polycystic ovarian disease or obesity. The mother’s increased blood sugar levels are transferred to the baby.

This, in turn, causes the baby’s pancreas, which start working within 11 weeks of conception, to produce extra insulin to get rid of this sugar.

“Insulin, incidentally, is a growth hormone. As the baby starts getting more energy than it needs, this gets stored as fat, leading to an abnormal weight gain, usually over 3.5 kg,” says Dr Ambrish Mithal, president-elect, Endocrine Society of India. “This may require delivery by caesarean section and cause breathing and shoulder problems at birth for the baby.”

Although gestational diabetes is only a temporary phase and it disappears after pregnancy, there is a 65-70% chance of it recurring. Therefore, it is vital for the mother to control her sugar intake and monitor blood sugar levels.

Mithal says gestational diabetes is often treated with insulin and dietary control rather than drugs. If treated in time, no complications ensue. Mithal says that many people don’t know that pregnant women have lower blood sugar levels than those who aren’t.

The baby absorbs nutrition from the mother, causing blood sugar levels to fall. So the pre-diabetic phase in a normal person becomes gestational diabetes in a pregnant woman. Testing is done an hour after fasting in pregnant women as sugar levels are highest at the time. Normally, this would be done two hours after fasting.

One of the important tests to get mean glucose value for the last 90-120 days of pregnancy is the HbA1c test. A woman with an HbA1c level lower than 5.3 does not indicate gestational diabetes, while one above 6 would.

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