Summer Challenges and Coping

healthshare.com. I suppose it's just really making it much more available, having much more information as to how they can join these supporting groups. Using the digital platform would be very useful but not all our patients have the same digital awareness, or in fact, the same access to digital abilities. So we need to think about how we can enable those patients and try and, you know, improve health equality in that way. Thank you. And now moving on to the summer months, although sometimes it doesn't feel like summer. What particular challenges does this time of the year, the summer months, bring for managing diabetes? Well patients are now thinking about travelling abroad, they are also much more relaxed generally, hopefully, so there could be slipping in their healthy eating. The other thing is that when patients go abroad they sometimes go to countries where the diet changes can affect their diabetes. So some countries they eat far more carbohydrates or far more sugary food and everyone on holiday may feel they can relax their alcohol consumption which you you know, they normally keep a tight rein on. And it's being able to actually say to patients that these could be challenges ahead of them, and just helping them to be aware of how they can either have restraint or have healthier options, or if they are going to relax their own restrictions, restrictions then when they come back to being able to once again restart with their healthy goals. And you previously referred to sleep earlier. With the summer months we have the longer days and the shorter nights. Have you seen or can you advise on any effective coping strategies for improving sleep, especially the summer? Well we do encourage again patients to look at their bedrooms to try and minimise light in the bedrooms, so trying to have dark window blinds and curtains, trying to turn off the blue lights of mobile phones and computers and so on in the bedroom and trying to get to bed at the same time, if that's possible, as they do the rest of the year, or at least trying to get the same number of hours of sleep that they normally do. Because we know that there is an importance in having good sleep. And furthermore, what changes in food and activity levels do your patients find challenging with their diabetes? I know you were mentioning earlier travel abroad being an issue as well, including also alcohol intake. Can you expand on that a bit more? I think that everything is so much more available in the summer, outdoors and everywhere. We often see ice cream, for example, and you know when you're feeling harsh and you're walking around with your friends and family, it's very tempting to have these sort of things. And one doesn't want to take away the pleasures and joys of eating this sort of food, but I think making, helping people to be aware of how the various tempting types of food and drink affect their blood sugars is most useful and can be quite challenging. But patients tend to want to engage with that and being self-aware and being knowledgeable. So we do help them when they come to their regular checkups with maintaining the healthy lifestyle as much as they possibly can and encouraging them to maintain movement and exercise. They're much more likely at this time of year to be happy to exercise outdoors, for example, rather than having to be in the gym, which is excellent. Thank you. And are there any other health behaviours or amongst the 12 characteristics that you would like to comment on in relation to summer? I think that the health characteristics, the main ones for people to actually feel that they are responsible for their own health and that it is not always the healthcare professionals telling them what to do, that we can help to inform them or to direct them on where to find information and support, but enabling them to tell us, to communicate with us, how they want us to support them and how they want to manage their diabetes, which is, after lifetime condition. So we very much want to be working together and having, you know, for them to have the confidence to know that we are here to support them rather than to tell them what to do.