Keeping Your Sugar Balanced

A person with diabetes has at least one main health goal each day: to keep his/her blood glucose levels as normal as possible. Doctors will tell you the way to do that is with exercise, a nutritious, diabetic diet and, if necessary, pills and insulin injections. Keeping your diabetes in check prevents diabetes-related complications such as stroke or eye and kidney damage.

When you wake up in the morning and before meals, your blood sugar should be less than 125 mg/dL. You’ll want to check your sugar levels each day with a glucose meter, and log your results for yourself and your health care provider. It’s important to keep a record of how your diabetes plan is working so that adjustments can be made, if needed.

Some glucose meters measure "blood sugar" levels. Others measure "plasma sugar" levels. It is important to know which kind of meter you have. Find out what your plasma or whole value should be by checking with your health care provider.

Should everyone check their glucose levels? The American Diabetes Association recommends blood glucose checks if you have diabetes and are:

• taking insulin or diabetes pills
• on intensive insulin therapy
• pregnant
• having a hard time controlling your blood glucose levels
• having severe low blood glucose levels or ketones from high blood glucose levels
• having low blood glucose levels without the usual warning signs

Use our Blood Sugar Tracker to monitor your daily blood sugar trends.

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