Coping with diabetes

Continue to follow your current self-care routine, as advised by your health professional. As you will know, this includes: 

• taking your prescribed medication 
• making healthy food choices 
• keeping active (by exercising at home if need be) 
• checking your feet daily 
• monitoring your blood glucose (if recommended to) 
• and anything else your health professional has advised you do to care for your health.  

 

 

An important note about repeat prescriptions: 

If you use repeat prescriptions and haven’t already done so, do make sure you have enough medication at home (and safely stored out of children or pets reach!) to cover this period. If you don’t you may want to speak to your GP surgery to request your next batch of medication a bit earlier. 

Here are some more tips to keep in mind: 

Continue to make healthy food choices 

Stress and worry can lead us to reach for food for comfort, especially foods that are sweet, fattening or salty. This may be even more tempting now, when we are home for most if not all the day, and the fridge is never too far away! Whilst people with diabetes are encouraged to eat a balanced diet and not cut out any food groups, do strive for healthy choices that include plenty of fruit and vegetables. Drink plenty of water and try to avoid too much caffeine or alcohol which can both have a negative impact on your mood and sense of wellbeing over time.  

 

Exercise 

You may already be physically fit, or perhaps fitness has become less of a priority since you left active service. If so, now might be a great opportunity to get more active. Government guidelines now  advise we can leave our homes to exercise, whilst maintaining social distance of at least two metres from others. This could include going for a walk, run or bike ride. 

If you’re starting out with exercise, aim to find movement that gets your heart beating a little faster for up to 30 minutes each day. Start slowly, you can always build up over time as your fitness level improves.  

Don’t forget, with a bit of imagination you can also keep active inside your home. Any activity that gets you moving and gets your heart rate up counts. Ideas include: 

• Jogging or marching on the spot during a TV advert break, grab a couple of cans of tinned food to give your arms a workout too 
• If you are wheelchair bound, check out YouTube where you can find exercise clips to help 
• Find a free online workout 
• If you have a garden, jogging or running drills may be possible  
• If your home has stairs, try walking or jogging up and down them, or using the first step for a workout – put some music on to help keep you motivated 
• Household chores like vacuuming the house or gardening may also raise your heart levels if you do it vigorously enough!  
• Dance (like no one is watching) – invite a family member to join in too!  

 

If you have diabetes related GP or hospital appointments booked  

Most routine diabetes appointments, such as your annual diabetes review, have been cancelled or postponed until life has returned to normal. In the meantime, if something changes with your health that makes you concerned, call your GP for guidance about what you should do. If you can’t get through, call 111 for advice.  

If you become unwell, remember the sick-day rules: 

1. Monitor your blood glucose levels every 4 hours, including at night-time. If your blood glucose is high, check your ketones. 
2. Keep eating and drinking. 
3. If you are vomiting or not able to keep fluids down, contact your GP by phone, or dial 111 for advice.  

For more details, visit the Diabetes UK website: https://www.diabetes.org.uk/Guide-to-diabetes/Life-with-diabetes/Illness 

 

 

Looking After Your Emotional Wellbeing 

We are living in very anxious times, so it’s natural you may be feeling more stressed or on edge than usual  

Some veterans struggle with feeling on edge or high alert after they leave the military, which is natural when you’ve spent long periods of service being exposed to threat or traumatic events. 

  Your training prepared you to be ready to act at a moment’s notice and planning for the worst was likely your default position. It naturally takes time to ‘turn down the volume’ of this response once military days are over, and with the current threat of COVID-19 you are likely to feel under the shadow of a new form of threat, as we all do.  

Some people living with diabetes can find that when they feel stressed, their blood glucose levels increase. For all these reasons, it’s helpful if you can find ways of managing your stress levels and feel more at ease in day to day life. 

Here are a few ideas if you fancy adding to your toolbox of ways you can manage: 

• Relaxation and breathing 
• Breathing Techniques 
• Managing your breathing is a simple way to help your body and relax. You might like to try the ‘Square breathing’ technique: 
• Breathe in for 4 seconds 
• Hold the breath for 4 seconds 
• Breathe out for 4 seconds 
• Pause for 4 seconds 
• Repeat for at least a minute, longer if you can, until you feel your body start to relax 

 

Check out our ‘Managing anxiety’ videos for more ideas.  

 

 

Aim for a daily routine with a mix of activities 

Many of us are dealing with a dramatic change in our daily lives, and you’ll know from your military days and the 7P’s that it’s good to have a plan! How would you like to spend your day? For physical and emotional wellbeing, plan to include a mix of activities, some examples could be: 

• Enjoyable and fun activities (some ideas to start you off are reading, indoor hobbies, listening to the radio or music, watching TV or films, writing a letter, time outside in the fresh air of you can) 
• Exercise and movement 
• Hobbies 
• Activity that will give you a sense of accomplishment (e.g. cooking a meal, fixing or mending something, a DIY or garden task, tidying a drawer, dealing with household paperwork)  
• Helping someone out 
• Spending time socially with others (by an online or video call while we’re social distancing). 
• You might like to use this activity worksheet to help you: 
• Link to behavioural activation worksheet  

 

 

Start to notice and manage your thoughts 

It’s easy to let our worrying thoughts take over. Our brains can get stuck on a cycle of focusing on worry, and even more so now with the heightened anxiety that comes with the coronavirus pandemic. Being alert to potential danger likely served you very well in the past – it may have even saved your or your comrades’ lives. The threat in the current times is not so tangible, and you may find it useful to start to tune in to your thoughts and notice which are not really serving you right now.   

Start to pay attention to what was going on, just before you felt stressed. Was there a thought or feeling you were having that triggered it, or were you doing an activity? You might like to keep track of this using the thought diary linked to below.  

• Combat Stress:  Thought Diary

Take a look at the following worksheet, which talks through some of the common unhelpful thinking styles that we can all fall into from time to time. Which are familiar to you? Can you start to replace them with the suggestions of helpful thoughts provided?   

 

• Combat Stress - Thinking Styles

 

 

‘This Too Shall Pass’ 

Least but not least, as the saying goes, ‘This too shall pass’. The coronavirus crisis WILL come to an end, and to keep this front of mind, why not plan a day out or trip somewhere new with family/friends, for when your freedom is restored? Having positive events to look forward to can keep our spirits up and help us pull through in difficult times