Managing Diabetes in Winter

Winter can be a challenge as the days are colder, nights are even more so, all we want to do is wrap up warm and perhaps there's less of an inclination to do things that we normally would do during the warmer months. Nonetheless, our physical health does not go away in terms of diabetes and often it is quite challenging to manage blood sugars during the colder months. It also coincides with Christmas and festivities and office parties, etc. So there are multiple different avenues by which one could worry that we are not doing enough from a diabetes or general health perspective. But it's important to understand this, manage it and have a routine during these months so that one is able to overcome these fundamental aspects. Another important part this year, of course, for many people on type 2 diabetes, especially those who are obese or overweight and have been put on GLP-1 analogues, which are the injectable treatments once weekly or even once daily, is that there has been a national shortage of them over the last few months. That is well expected to last into the winter and perhaps even into spring 2024. So we may find that our healthcare practitioners or your healthcare practitioners may change your diabetes regime considerably to accommodate for these deficiencies or lack of availability of these drugs. So I would recommend that one wouldn't get stressed. It's a temporary phase and hopefully in next year, the NHS will find a way to circumvent and overcome this. But in the meantime, it's about getting the fundamentals right. It's focusing on your diabetes, but also focusing on broader health aspects, the hypertension, the smoking side, the activity side. Type 2 diabetes is not a condition of just high blood sugar. It has got multiple different links from high blood pressure to cholesterol issues to a higher risk for cardiovascular disease in the future. And it's making sure during these winter months, during the few next months that follow, one takes holistic views and tries to intensify all different angles that are associated with type 2 diabetes. you