To a large extent, managing your blood sugar is like dealing with a car. You have necessary fuel (food), you may have some additives to your fuel (medication), and you have movement (your activity level). All of these impact your sugar levels.

We all need food. That’s a given. Foods with more non fiber carbohydrate will definitely elevate your sugar levels if you are diabetic. Medication will definitely lower your sugar levels. So will exercise. Combining all of these will assist in managing your sugar levels.

Of course, it’s not quite that easy, is it?

If you look at what I just wrote above, it’s a lot like discussing how to manage your weight. What goes in matters a lot, and your activity level matters a lot. Everyone who has tried to lose weight (or for that matter gain weight) knows that, yet the vast majority of people who make an attempt fail. Similarly, every diabetic who has even gotten cursory education knows that what they eat, their medication, and their activity level all matter in managing their sugars, yet a lot of them have difficulty keeping their sugars under reasonable control.

Education–knowledge–matters. But education isn’t all. Figuring out ways to manage your behavior to use what you’ve learned is just as important. Think about teenage pregnancy, for instance–we all know what causes pregnancy. It’s not a secret. Yet at the same time, we have great difficulty figuring out just what to do to prevent teenage pregnancy. We start with education–which is great and I’m all for–but we don’t have a great plan for what to have young people do–their behavior–to have them avoid situations where they may become pregnant.

So those are the three: food, medication, and activity. We’ll look at food more next time.