Living with diabetes is difficult and frightening. Anyone who's been diagnosed with diabetes has likely heard all the horror stories such as amputations and blindness that can result from this disease. For these reasons everyone who has diabetes, either Type I or Type II, does their best to control their blood sugars and then follow-up quarterly with their doctor. The first advice that you'll no doubt receive from medical practitioners is to eat a healthy low-carb diet and exercise regularly. Exercise has the added benefit of benefiting your entire body such as the heart. Exercise can help to keep a diabetic even more 'healthy' than a non-diabetic person who doesn't exercise.

However, exercise and diet alone may not be enough to control diabetes as in my case. Despite my best efforts to exercise and eat right I am unable to control my diabetes without medications. I have used metformin in the past and stopped using it due to increasingly severe stomach ailments. I currently use glyburide to control blood sugars.

By monitoring your own blood sugars regularly at home and working with your doctor or a diabetes specialist it's possible to control blood sugars and keep them within a normal level. By maintaining a Hemoglobin A1c level below 6.2 a diabetic can control blood sugars as if he or she weren't diabetic. I've never yet been able to achieve this 6.2, though the closest I cam was when I was using metformin. I have been able to try and keep my hemoglobin A1C below 7 at the best of times.

Though medications can prove to be very useful in helping to control diabetes, these medicines may not work without proper eating habits and exercise. The best illustration that I have of this happened last night. For dinner I ate a small piece of steak, a boiled chicken breast, cauliflower and broccoli. I try and make sure that my meals are low in carb. Prior to eating dinner I took my daily dose of glyburide. One hour after dinner I used my blood glucose meter to measure my sugar level and found it was 13.3. This level was obviously too high. After a meal the highest blood sugar which a diabetic should have is 10. For strict control I've been instructed by nurses at the diabetes clinic to keep my blood sugar below 8 after meals. Immediately after seeing my 13.3 reading I exercised on my home elliptical trainer for just 8 minutes. The results were remarkable. I tested my blood sugar again on my meter and it had fallen to 6.3. Then I started feeling a little dizzy so I waited a few minutes and tested myself again. My blood sugar had fallen to 5.0. As I kept feeling increasingly dizzy I decided to eat a small chocolate chip cookie to help stop my blood sugar from falling any further.