If you are diabetic and suffering from cancer at the same time, then your body can go through some serious changes. As you carry on with your cancer treatment, your sugar levels can shoot up. Chemotherapy can affect your blood sugars causing complications during the treatment.
A person suffering from diabetes finds it hard to control their blood sugar and having an added ailment only increases the complications. Therefore, it is important to control the blood sugar levels during and after the treatment of cancer.
Why do blood sugar levels increase during chemotherapy?
Steroids that are given during cancer treatment are reported to increase the normal blood sugars even if you are not diabetic. Therefore, having existing diabetes can further induce it. If you stop taking steroids, then your blood levels can come down to normal levels after a few days.
Apart from steroids, stress also plays an important factor in inducing diabetes. People tend to suffer from extreme stress and anxiety during chemotherapy which can lead to shooting up blood sugar levels.
Although, you can still manage to control your increasing sugar level by following simple steps:
- The most important step is to have a healthy balanced diet. Include fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in your diet to keep your sugar level under control.
- It may be difficult to exercise with a weak cancerous body but try to do simple exercises to stay fit. It’ll help you in chemotherapy too.
- Do not take the stress. Whatever has happened, there is nothing you can change about it. But you can think positive and keep stress away to stay healthy.
- Take the advice of your doctor and follow the instructions given by them to manage your diabetes.
- With little lifestyle changes and making the right choices can keep us away from cancer and diabetes. Choose correctly what you consume and what you don’t.
