Frequently Ask Questions

Manage-it-Yourself (MiYDiabetes) is a serious self-managing approach to helping people who have been recently diagnosed with pre-diabetes. Effectively managing or reversing the path to full Type II Diabetes requires the individual to establish and maintain a healthier lifestyle.

Substantial lifestyle improvements require a significant effort on the part of the individual, often called self-management. Medications alone are not sufficient to halt progression of the disease. For almost everyone faced with the prospect of Type II Diabetes, self-managing daily lifestyle events such as exercise and diet are needed. MiY Diabetes provides a holistic approach with the daily assistance needed to establish a healthier lifestyle and avoid the ravages of diabetes.

MiY Diabetes provides a new, holistic, approach to managing your diabetes. Diabetes is a complex disease and to effectively manage it the individual must maintain control all aspects of a healthy lifestyle. This includes 6 major aspects of your daily life.

Exercise (Increasing your level of physical activity)
Diet (Keeping track of how many calories you consume)
Sleep (Getting ample, quality sleep each day)
Medications (Adhering to your prescribed medications)
Harmful Substances (Avoiding all uses of harmful substances)
Attitude (Maintaining a positive attitude toward controlling your daily activities)

All six aspects are very important and failure of any one of them can accelerate the harmful effects of diabetes. The complexities of diabetes place many requirements on the individual, all focused on better self control.

The first and foremost advantage is to the primary user (P-user) with pre-diabetes, providing daily assistance and encouragement in sustaining a healthier lifestyle.

Since self-managing a healthier lifestyle is an ongoing process, it is very important for the P-user to establish and maintain a strong support organization. The ideal setup is to have three or more Helpers; a family member, a friend and a member of P-user’s medical team. These Helpers become the P-user’s private social group. This group has ongoing access to the P-User’ trends. These trends show the P-User’s progress allowing the Helpers to provide on-going encouragement and support to the P-User. The Helpers will be periodically receive messages expressing both positive events and concerns based on the trends. The team can also communicate with each other as well as the P-User.

Having a member of the P-user’s medical team participate is very important. This allows the medical team, usually a nurse and/or physician, to obtain feedback on the condition of their patient in-between visits and be more likely to take action if the trends indicate that a change is necessary; both physically or mentally. Having this capability may allow the medical staff to monitor the patient with fewer medical visits and, thus, lower medical costs.

There are also many technical advantages to MiY Diabetes. The MiY knowledge system consists of a flexible rules processor that can adapt the system to the individual and, being experience based, will continue to grow over time.

Another major advantage of MiY Diabetes is its independence from any specific activity or treatment. It allows the P-user to choose own exercise routines, diets, and other techniques in helping to achieve a healthier lifestyle.

MiY Diabetes is designed to help Prime Users self-manage their high blood sugar (pre-diabetes and type II diabetes). To be successful as a prime user, here is what you can expect. There are 6 major aspects of your daily life that you will need to focus on to successfully self-manage your high blood sugar. Measuring each of these six areas each day is critical to success. Using MiYDiabetes, less than 5 minutes per day is needed to record your results. The real effort can be focused on the six key aspects.

Exercise – The best way to measure your level of activity each day is to use some type of steps measurement. An alternate could be the minutes spent on some type of strenuous gym equipment. A good conversion to steps is about 100 per minute.

Diet – Measuring calories is the most difficult measurement but there are many devices and techniques to help you determine the number of calories consumed each day.

Sleep – There are a growing array of devices for measuring your sleep and you can always fall back on a clock or watch.

Medications – keeping track of the number of prescribed medications that you take.

Harmful Substances – Stopping all uses of harmful substances is critical to avoiding full diabetes. These substances include tobacco, alcohol (more than one drink per day) and illegal drugs.

Attitude – Maintaining a positive attitude toward controlling your daily activities

In addition to the six quantitative measures, there are six qualitative measures that are just as important to measure. Measuring how you fell about the measures will help you stick to your plan and increase your chances of slowing or even avoiding diabetes.

MiY Diabetes recommends that each Prime User set up a personal support group.

Diabetes self-management is an ongoing process. it is very important for the P-user to establish and maintain a strong support organization. The ideal setup is to have three or more Helpers including a family member, a friend and a member of your medical team. These Helpers must first signup for a free MiYDiabetes Helper account. As Prime User you can invite each to become a member of become the P-personal support group. As a Helper you have ongoing access to the P-User’ trends. These trends show the P-User’s progress helping you to provide on-going encouragement and support.

Having a member of the P-user’s medical team participate is very important. This allows your medical team, usually a nurse and/or physician, to obtain feedback on your condition in-between office visits and be more likely to take action if the trends indicate that a change is needed.

At the heart of the MIY System is a wiki-like knowledge processor that interprets sets of application specific rules. The rules rely on experienced-based techniques and can be created and edited by non-programming experts in the specific application area. Variables within the rules can be further customized by the individual user. Over time, the rules sets can grow and change and will not be restricted to the expertise of MiY personnel.

A critical element of diabetes self-management is increasing your level physical activity. A lack of balance between your calorie intake and physical activity is likely how you arrived here with pre-diabetes and changing this balance will be necessary to curtail its future impact on your health. Increasing your level of activity through walking or an equivalent activity and measuring your daily steps will be necessary. How you measure your steps is up to you. There are many options available, many at a modest cost or by using your smart phone.

Counting calories is likely the most difficult daily measurements to make. Almost anything you put into your mouth has a calorie content. Most of us have no idea of the content until we begin measuring and recording the amount of calories we actually consume. This definitely includes every meal, snack and drink we consume. Whether you are trying something as simple as using smaller plates and glasses to a comprehensive packaged meals with precise calorie counts, the choice is up to you. Getting started is a challenge but choosing a method, whether manual or device based, is the first step. Plus, you must be serious and honest with yourself and count everything that you consume during the day. Remember, many snacks are loaded with calories.

Frequently Ask Questions

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