Mental, emotional and social effects of type 2 diabetes

The stress from managing your type 2 diabetes can negatively impact your mental, emotional, and social health—but it doesn't have to. John Merendino, MD, discusses ways to alleviate stress so you can have a better quality of life.

Transcript

00:00

I can really think of no other disease where so much of the management falls to the individual. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:13

Diabetes enormously increases stress in patients' lives. They're asked to do things that are normally historically

00:20

the responsibility of the health care provider. So their stress level goes up as a result.

00:29

The one tip that I give people to help them manage their diabetes better is to not expect or demand perfection of themselves.

00:36

There are a lot of things that people have to do to properly manage diabetes and so you have to set a lot of goals. But it's important to make sure that the goals that you

00:44

establish are things that you can achieve and not things that are going to frustrate you.

00:53

I'll make a very, very small recommendation for something that everybody can do but I think will have enormous benefit.

00:59

And that is not paying any attention to what's on the front of a food package. Because the advertising will say things

01:07

like low sugar or no added sugar, but in a lot of cases that has nothing to do with the reality of what

01:13

is nutritionally appropriate for somebody. So I want you to turn the package around, and look

01:19

at the food label, and start reading the nutrition label. Start to understand how much protein, fat, and carbohydrate

01:27

you're supposed to take. And that's really the best way to pick the proper foods. [MUSIC PLAYING]