Get up and beat fatigue with awareness

When your get up and go has got­ten up and left, con­sider your blood sugar. Novem­ber is National Dia­betes Aware­ness Month. An under­stand­ing of dia­betes is the first step in com­bat­ing chronic fatigue.

The num­ber of peo­ple with dia­betes is increas­ing at an amaz­ing rate. To quote the num­bers just makes peo­ple a sta­tis­tic. The fact is that if your life hasn’t been affected by dia­betes by now, there is an over­whelm­ing chance that you or some­one you love will be affected by this dis­ease dur­ing your lifetime.

Improved ways of detect­ing dia­betes and the grow­ing num­ber of con­di­tions that lead to uncon­trolled blood sugar is caus­ing the num­ber of cases dis­cov­ered each year to sky­rocket. Being tired all of the time is one of the red flags that may sig­nal a blood glu­cose abnormality.

Iron­i­cally one of the best reme­dies for being tired all of the time is to not sit and rest but to get up and move. Slug­gish­ness can be cor­rected with activ­ity. Think of a salad dress­ing bot­tle. When all the tasty spices fall to the bot­tom, the only way to return the con­coc­tion to its orig­i­nal good­ness is to shake it. When all of the good energy has been zapped from the body and every­thing has set­tled into the couch or bed, putting your feet on the ground and shak­ing out the cob­webs in your mus­cles acti­vates energy again.

Mov­ing not only wakes up unused leg and arm mus­cles, it stim­u­lates the brain with feel-good hor­mones. I once tried to moti­vate a woman into mov­ing and chang­ing her lifestyle but she mis­un­der­stood me and declared that she “liked where she lived.”

Mov­ing and becom­ing more active doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily involve chang­ing your address, but if that’s what it takes to excite your body into move­ment, do it. Chronic fatigue takes so much energy to endure that it is worth­while to at least try to make every move­ment meaningful.

Peo­ple with ele­vated blood sug­ars have too much energy float­ing around in their blood­stream. When gaso­line is close to $4 per gal­lon to move a car, why not use an avail­able and rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive source of energy to move your body, that is, blood sugar.

When peo­ple tell me that they walk to stay in shape, I ques­tion the level of this activ­ity. Daily move­ment of the mus­cles is impor­tant to the health of the body and the level of blood sugar. I’ve known weight lifters that live in wheel­chairs and grand­mas in their 90s that still exer­cise every day. They are not plagued with chronic fatigue.

Dia­betes is National Dia­betes Aware­ness Month. Become aware of your fam­ily his­tory of dia­betes. Hav­ing a rel­a­tive with dia­betes increases the risk for you. This means that grand­par­ents can become role mod­els for their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren by talk­ing about dia­betes and show­ing them how to care for them­selves through good example.

Tak­ing a walk instead of dri­ving to get ice cream is an excel­lent activ­ity to teach loved ones about the use of blood sugar. It will make your get and go stay and even become stronger.

Bob­bie Ran­dall is a cer­ti­fied dia­betes edu­ca­tor and a reg­is­tered, licensed dietit­ian. She super­vises a dia­betes self-management train­ing pro­gram at Aultman-Orrville Hos­pi­tal, Orrville. Con­tact her at bobbie.randall@aultmanorrville.org or 330–684-4776.

Posted by Bobbie Randall on Oct 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.