Ask the Expert: I don’t understand my high blood sugars and how carbs affect them.

“I don’t understand my high blood sugars and how carbs affect them.”

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Answer:

Well, as we all know, high sugar levels come from so many sources! Stress, being tired, illness, forgetting to take meds, eating too much carbohydrate, not exercising enough … the list alone makes one want to throw it all to the wind! The best thing to do for high blood sugars is to evaluate what you can do to change them. Some factors are out of our control, so focus on how you are doing with exercise, eating right and medications. If you don’t understand carbohydrates, I would recommend visiting with a dietitian. She or he does understand them, and would be happy to help you understand them as well. There are some really great tools available to help you understand carbs on the internet, a great one being at diabetes.org where you can click on their nutrition tab and actually enter foods you eat and see how much carbohydrate they have. Sometimes a meal plan given to you by an educator makes all the difference in the world and takes away some of the “guess work” allowing you to take better care of yourself.