The key element to controlling your diabetes is a healthy diet and increased exercise. However, the standards of what a healthy diet looks like vary greatly depending on lifestyle and cultural differences. Traditionally, diabetes education and management practices have been based on western perspectives of food choices and lifestyle. There is a crucial challenge facing health care providers on how to help reduce the prevalence of a “diabetes” diagnosis among various ethnic populations that make up our great “melting pot.”
Learning how your cultural preferences at mealtime impact blood glucose levels is the first step to making positive changes that will have a significant impact on your health. For example, if you and your family are likely to include white rice at every meal, you may find that eliminating this carbohydrate-rich food is hard. One cup of white rice has about 53 grams of carbs – half the recommended amount per day. Learning how to replace it with more healthy alternatives like brown or wild rice, or quinoa, little by little, will help.
In addition to learning how to change your diet a bit at a time, increasing physical activity is essential to managing diabetes. Some people are happy walking on a treadmill, biking or going to the gym three times a week. Yet, others may be more accustomed to dancing, gardening or working with their hands. A person’s individual preferences should be encouraged and worked into a diabetes management plan. Changing a lifetime of habits is not easy and you could find yourself at a loss when trying to make sweeping changes overnight. Introducing changes over time and with guidance from your health care provider is the key to success.
For some patients, a referral to a comprehensive diabetes education and treatment program with the support of interpreter services can be a successful intervention to help communicate the importance of steps like dietary changes and increased physical activity.
To find a doctor or schedule an appointment visit Steward DoctorFinder™ or call 1-800-488-5959.
To find a doctor or schedule an appointment, visit Steward DoctorFinder™.
