In the Philippines, there are around 4 million people who are diagnosed with diabetes and it is expected to rise in the coming years.³⁶

Naturally, it's not easy when you have to be careful about what you eat and drink every minute of the day. There is a constant stress as one keeps contemplating - am I doing everything right to keep my glucose levels in check and prevent complications?

In your quest to stay healthy, you end up following a number of online and offline resources, that often tend to increase confusion. The constant dilemmas surrounding lifestyle changes, food habits, and management of a routine during travel - can be extremely stressful and frustrating.

So, is there a way to be confident in your daily regime, in spite of the seemingly conflicting information available outside?

Well, there absolutely is – Ask your Glucose!

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), glucose monitoring is the most important parameter for controlling glucose levels. The reason being, all the lifestyle interventions that have been adopted by you can lead to a direct rise and fall of your glucose levels.⁴⁶ This dynamic nature of glucose means that it is not enough to simply follow lifestyle interventions, but also develop a close habit of understanding your body physiology.

One of the ways to do that is by incorporating continuous glucose monitoring into your daily routine. With continuous glucose monitoring, you can get real-time updates about fluctuations in your glucose levels, allowing you to live a stress-free life within your ‘new-normal’ as a person with diabetes.

Continuous glucose monitoring can help you improve your lifestyle on various fronts:

Food: In an era of information overload, continuous glucose monitoring can help you tackle the “To eat or not to eat” dilemma by monitoring changes in your glucose levels according to the changes in your meal components³ and using that information to drive your decision.

Exercise: While exercise is necessary, over-exercise or even not doing enough, can lead to counter effects on diabetes management. Continuous glucose monitoring can help you understand if the exercise routine is suitable for you by predicting an overall direction in which your glucose levels are going. Thereby alerting you if your levels are going down due to over-exercise (hypoglycaemia).⁴⁷

Medications: A regular account of your glucose levels also helps your doctor get a wide range of information to work with, while understanding if the prescribed medications are working for you. If any medication requires alterations or replacement, they need not wait for an extended period of time.⁴⁷

With disorders that involve strict glucose management, there is no one solution that fits all, since no two individuals react to lifestyle interventions in the exact same way. Every individual and every physiology is unique.⁴⁷