Diabetes is a complex disease that requires daily self-management - making healthy food choices, staying physically active, monitoring your blood sugar and taking medications as prescribed. It is also important to talk regularly with your diabetes care team to problem solve, reduce risks for complications and cope with lifestyle changes.

xDiabetes education is an essential part of good blood sugar control, and avoiding long-term healthcare complications.People with diabetes need to know what to do if something goes wrong, how to adjust their diet, exercise, lifestyle, medication or insulin.

Diabetes care and education help people with diabetes:

• Learn basic information about diabetes and its management
• Understand how to use diabetes devices, such as blood glucose meters, insulin pens, insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors
• Adopt healthy eating habits through nutrition education, including meal-planning, weight-loss strategies and other disease-specific nutrition counseling
• Develop problem-solving strategies and skills to self-manage diabetes
• Monitor blood glucose and learn how to interpret and appropriately respond to the results
• Understand how their medications work, including their action, side effects, efficacy, toxicity, prescribed dosage and more
• Develop skills for handling stressful situations