Diabetes Treatment: Insulin, Oral Meds, Diet & Exercise

“How does my doctor decide a diabetes treatment plan for me?” – you must have found yourself wondering about this quite a few times. For every person, the diabetes treatment plan is personalised.

This is because your diabetes treatment depends on your type of diabetes, how well controlled are your blood sugars and your other existing health conditions or comorbidities.

Irrespective of which diabetes treatment your doctor decides for you, the goal remains the same: to get blood sugars within the target levels and prevent complications.

Remedies for Diabetes depending upon the type of diabetes

Diabetes treatment involves regular blood sugar monitoring, insulin injections, oral medications, and a healthy lifestyle that includes making right food choices, maintaining an ideal weight and getting regular physical activity.

Depending on what type of diabetes you have, your doctor will modify your diabetes treatment plan as follows:

1. Diabetes treatment for people with type 1 diabetes

If you have type 1 diabetes, you will need to take insulin several times a day, every day. This is because your pancreas no longer makes insulin inside your body.

Like everything else in life, insulin-based diabetes treatment has also evolved and advanced. There are now newer insulin delivery systems like insulin pumps, smart pens and artificial pancreas that give you small, steady insulin doses throughout the day.

2. Diabetes treatment for people with type 2 diabetes

It includes both medications (diabetes pills or insulin) and favourable lifestyle modification such as losing weight, healthy eating and exercising routinely.

But, over time, you might go off track from your healthy lifestyle and when your blood sugars will not get in control, your doctor will increase dosage of your diabetes medicines. And even if you are on diabetes pills or insulin, having a healthy lifestyle helps the medications perform better.

In other words a healthy lifestyle complements your doctor’s prescription.That is where you will need Diabefly — a Digital Therapeutic Diabetes Care Program to help you have better control over diabetes. Diabefly is a safe and scientific diabetes management program that consists of 3 expert coaches – a Diabetes Educator or a Nutritionist, a Physiotherapist and a Psychologist.

Digital Therapeutics has completely changed the face of type 2 diabetes treatment by helping people achieve their health goals. And, here is how Diabefly will help you in lowering your blood sugars without making you give up on your favourite foods.If you are eligible, you can now even reverse diabetes.

Diabetes is said to be reversed when you have achieved a HbA1c of less than 6.5% and it stays in this range for at least 6 months without any medications. Find out if you are eligible for diabetes reversal by taking our 2 min test.

To help people reverse diabetes, Team Fitterfly has launched a scientific Diabetes Reversal Program – Diabefly Reverse. It is specially designed to help people reverse diabetes using a multidisciplinary regimented approach over 6 months.You can now save your time and money, prevent diabetes-related complications and reclaim your life with Diabefly Reverse.

3. Treatment for people with prediabetes or borderline diabetes

Prediabetes is the long silent precursor of diabetes. People with prediabetes have HbA1C range – 5.7% to 6.4% but not high enough for a diagnosis of full-blown type 2 diabetes.In this case, the goal of your prediabetes treatment plan is to stop the progression to diabetes.

So your treatment will involve managing the curable risk factors that include losing weight, a healthy diet, exercising for at least 150 minutes per week, and reducing your stress levels.

By taking the right action at the right time, you can prevent the slow progression of prediabetes to fully-established diabetes, dependency on medications and diabetes-related complications.Unfortunately, prediabetes is a silent condition without any symptoms.

So you might even know that you already have this condition. To know if you are at risk for prediabetes, take your prediabetes risk assessment test here.To help people with prediabetes, Team Fitterfly has launched India’s only Digital Prediabetes Management Program – Diabefly Pro. Don’t let the ‘pre’ in prediabetes fool you. Take the right step early on with Diabefly.

4. Diabetes treatment for pregnant women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM)

GDM is a common health condition wherein a pregnant woman develops diabetes. It is diagnosed during the 24th to 28th week of pregnancy. The first treatment of choice for pregnant women with Gestational diabetes is lifestyle therapy with modifications in diet and safe pregnancy exercises.

But if you do not achieve your target blood sugar levels with lifestyle therapy alone, your doctor/gynaecologist may start with insulin therapy.Natural remedies for diabetes during pregnancy should consist of personalised nutrition plans, exercise & fitness guidance, and sleep & stress management to prevent complications for both the mother and the baby.

To this effect, Team Fitterfly has launched a Digital Diabetes Care Program for pregnant women with diabetes – Diabefly GDM. Allow an expert Diabefly Coach handhold you for a worry-free pregnancy and healthy baby.

Remedies for diabetes – Oral medications and Insulins

1. Diabetes pills or Oral Hypoglycemic Agents (OHAs) for diabetes treatment

Plenty of diabetes medications are available in the market either as single drug formulations or fixed-dose combinations. It is beyond the scope of this article to review all of these drugs.

Here are the 5 main drug classes available and the generic names of a few drugs in each class. Your doctor will decide which pill is the best fit for you.

• • Sulfonylureas like glimepiride, glipizide and glyburide.
  • Biguanides like metformin
  • Thiazolidinediones such as pioglitazone and rosiglitazone.
  • GLP-1 analogs like liraglutide, semaglutide and dulaglutide.
  • DPP-4 inhibitors include sitagliptin, saxagliptin and linagliptin.

2. Insulin medication for diabetes treatment

Like OHAs, different types of insulins are also available in the market. Depending upon the insulin action, they can be divided into 4 categories as mentioned below:

• • Rapid-acting insulins such as insulin glulisine, insulin lispro and insulin aspart.
  • Short-acting insulin-like insulin regular.
  • Intermediate-acting insulins such as NPH.
  • Long-acting insulins such as insulin glargine, insulin detemir and insulin degludec.

Apart from insulin, oral meds, healthy diet & exercise, diabetes treatment also includes pancreas transplant for people with type 1 diabetes and bariatric surgery, which is an indirect diabetes treatment by helping people lose weight surgically.

A healthy lifestyle is an integral part of your diabetes management repertoire – no matter the type of diabetes you are dealing with. Complement your Doctor’s medical treatment with a Digital Therapeutic like Diabefly for holistic care around nutrition, physical activity, weight and stress management.

To know more about how Diabefly can help you achieve your blood sugar goals, visit www.fitterfly.com/diabefly or speak to our counsellors at +91 2248971077 (Ext 1).