Tag: chronic disease

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4 Ways to Thrive during the Holidays When You Are a Caregiver

1. Identify specific stressors

While it’s easy to lump stress altogether, identifying where your stress is coming from is necessary. Here are a few factors family caregivers often say are causing them anxiety and stress:

Worrying that the senior’s needs aren’t being met

Feeling concerned about neglecting a spouse, partner, or children

Lacking enough time to get things done

Missing work due to caregiving duties

Needing more time for self-care

Once you’ve identified where you are struggling, it’s easier to find solutions. For example, call your church or synagogue to see if they have a volunteer visitor program for homebound seniors. This assistance would allow your loved one to have a regular visitor, and you to take a break.

2. Accept that no one can do it all

One mistake caregivers routinely make is thinking they can and must do everything alone. In most situations, that just isn’t realistic. Before the holidays are in full swing this year, set a goal to be more pragmatic. Here are a few ideas to consider for your holiday goal setting:

Simplify holiday celebrations: It really is okay to simplify holiday traditions while you are busy caregiving. Instead of cooking a formal, sit-down dinner for family and friends, ask everyone to bring a dish or find a restaurant you can all meet at for a meal. Remind yourself that it doesn’t have to be forever, just until life is a little calmer.

Responding to invitations: Most people have a difficult time saying no. Set your feelings of guilt aside and don’t feel obligated to attend every holiday event you are invited to. On the flip side, don’t feel guilty if you want to go to a party and have someone else stay with your loved one. A night out to laugh and enjoy yourself will likely make you a better caregiver.

3. Your health matters, too

The hectic pace of the holidays combined with the demands of caregiving, can lead many to take shortcuts with their diet and to skip exercising. Neither is a good idea.

If you need to rely on fast food or take out during the holiday rush, review the menus (and nutritional content!) at your favorite restaurants and opt for those that are the healthiest. This information on healthy foods at big chain restaurants will help.

4. Explore senior care options

Caregiving is a lot of work any time of year. Before the height of the holiday season, explore your local senior care options. Adult day centers and home care are two possibilities. Respite care and assisted living are others. You can take advantage of these services on a short-term or permanent basis.

Sometimes, during the holiday season, caregivers begin to realize that a senior loved one needs more assistance than can be provided at home. If this situation sounds familiar, we’d like to help.

Diabetes Late Nite Inspired by Elvis Presley

We’re talking about how to not let diabetes dim your dazzle during the holiday season with our panel of experts on Divabetic’s popular Diabetes Late Nite podcast inspired by Elvis Presley.

Guests include Chilbrook Kennels Breeder Author, Diabetes Alert Dog and Scent Detection Expert, Debby Kay, Poet Lorraine Brooks, Susan Weiner MS, RDN, CDE, CDN, Mandy Reece PHARMD, CDE, BC-ADM, FAADE, Rachel Zinman,  the Charlie’s Angels of Outreach featuring Patricia Addie-Gentle RN, CDE and America’s #1 Energy Conductor, High Voltage. 

Throughout the podcast we will be featuring songs from the new “Christmas with Elvis and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra” album courtesy of SONY Music.

The album brings together Elvis Presley’s best-loved yuletide performances from “Elvis’ Christmas Album” (1957) and “Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas” (1971) re-imagined with sublime and exquisite new arrangements performed by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

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What You Should Know About Intermittent Fasting & Diabetes with Jill Weisenberger

A new study from New Zealand suggests intermittent fasting is good for someone living with Type 2 diabetes.  Since then Divabetic’s social media feed is blowing up with story after story about this topic. We reached out to our friend and colleague, Registered Dietitian, Certified Diabetes Educator, Jill Weisenberger MS, RDN, CDE, CHWC, FAND to help us understand what intermittent fasting is and why or why not we might want to include it fasting in our diabetes self-management. Here’s her response: 

Q: what is intermittent fasting?

Jill Weisenberger (JW): There are a variety of approaches, but they all put emphasis on restricting eating at certain times. One common version of IF is the 5:2 plan, which means to eat healthfully and normally for 5 days of the week and to restrict eating to just a few hundred calories 2 days per week. Another form of IF is to extend the overnight fast to 12 or even 16 hours. 

Q: I’ve read that intermittent fasting can help with weight loss and lowering A1C. Are these outcomes realistic for people with type 2 diabetes? 

JW: Some studies do show improvements in weight and blood glucose control and even insulin sensitivity. However, when these IF diets are compared to other dietary strategies for weight loss, the results aren’t so clear that one way is better than another. IF, especially the 5:2 plan, can increase the risk of hypoglycemia in anyone taking a medication that has hypoglycemia as a side effect. There may be populations in which IF is a potentially harmful, such as pregnant women, adolescents and people with eating disorders.

My limited experience with the 5:2 plan suggests that it makes daily exercise very hard. 

Q: Can intermittent fasting help people with prediabetes? If so, why? If not, why? 

JW: If the person with prediabetes is overweight and if IF leads to weight loss, then yes, IF can help people with prediabetes. There was one study in men with prediabetes who were instructed to eat only during 6 hours of the day and to fast for the other 18. Compared to people eating for 12 hours and fasting for 12 hours, those in the longer fasting group saw improvements in blood pressure, insulin sensitivity and beta-cell responsiveness.

Overall, I think that IF can be a tool for some people. In others, it might not be helpful at all, and in some it can be harmful. I like to discuss it in depth with my patients before they decide to give it a try. If someone wants to restrict the hours of eating, I think it’s important to let this work with the circadian rhythms, so stop eating hours before bed and fast longer during the night. I don’t suggest eating a large dinner and fasting all day.

Intermittent Fasting Calculator

Intermittent Fasting (IF) Calculator helps you cycling between Eating and Fasting: CLICK HERE

Jill Weisenberger

Jill Weisenberger’s comprehensive guide, ‘Prediabetes: A Complete Guide: Your Lifestyle Reset to Stop Prediabetes and Other Chronic Illnesses’ will lead you through dozens of concrete steps you can take to reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and other lifestyle-related chronic diseases. Taking an individualized approach to your lifestyle “reset,” this book will allow you to choose your own path to wellness, help you gain a greater sense of wellbeing, boost your confidence in your abilities to maintain a healthful lifestyle, and potentially even help you reverse prediabetes and avoid type 2 diabetes and other chronic illnesses.

Diabetes Late Nite with music from Patti Austin

Jill Weisenberger appears on Divabetic’s Diabetes Late Nite podcast featuring music by Patti Austin. We’re talking to Jill about healthy strategies to help you deal with the “FOOD POLICE”.

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