Suddenly, you feel so, so tired.

One of the most common and incapacitating symptom of diabetes is fatigue, sapping the energy of the diabetic, often in the most inopportune of times.

If you’re one of the diabetics that experience this, don’t freak out, approximately 85% of all the people with diabetes experience fatigue all the time. So, how can you cope up with feeling tired all the time? Fortunately, there are ways to counter this diabetes complication, just scroll down to see five ways on how you can overcome diabetes fatigue.

1. Eat healthy and don’t skip meals

Your lack of energy to do anything can be directly attributed to the fact that you haven’t been eating well. This isn’t just about eating meals on time but also on overcompensating. For example, eating a very large lunch or dinner because you happen to skip the earlier meals. Metabolism slows down at night, making it harder for your body to burn the calories of the heavy meal you consume at night. This might make you feel sluggish when you wake up in the morning.

2. Exercise regularly

This might sound counterproductive since when you’re fatigued, you’re generally tired, but then, exercising can also tremendously help your body “wake up” from its relaxed state. Also, exercising outside is much better than doing it indoors since sunlight is a natural indicator for your body to wake up. Barring that, you can set-up full-spectrum lights indoors to stimulate sunshine.

When you exercise, your body releases endorphins, the chemicals that trigger a positive feeling in your body, inhibiting your pain receptors.

3. Get as much as 7-9 hours of sleep every night

The 7 to 9 hours of sleep at night is more than just a recommendation or guide, it is a necessity for adults. Once sleep cycle is composed of 90 minutes, through which the body moves through five stages of sleep – the first four is the non-rapid eye movement (NREM) stage while the last stage is where the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep happens

Although getting a good night’s sleep is not just a simple task of combining 2-3 sleep cycles, apparently, the NREM sleep occurs in the early hours of sleep while REM happens much later. Skipping on your sleep or getting few hours of sleep successively can negatively impact your health and can cause weight gain.

4. See your doctor regularly

Having regular check-ups and appointments with your doctor is a requirement when you’re diabetic, especially if you’re already exhibiting some of the more serious complications of this disease. Furthermore, if you’re starting to feel overfatigued every time, the doctor might need to change his prescriptions or increase the dosage. You’ll never know this if you wouldn’t schedule an appointment regularly or on the date your doctor recommends.

5. Check for clinical depression

Often, people who are diagnosed with serious health problems such as diabetes are more likely to contract clinical depression than people unaffected by those health problems. Depression can seriously impact the well-being of a person, including their ability and motivation to manage their conditions. It can also lead to poor lifestyle choices such as smoking, stress eating, sleeping all day, or weight gain, all of which are risk factors for diabetes.

People with depression have the tendency to feel tired all the time, lose all interest in daily activities, difficulty sleeping, or irritability. If you’re diabetic or you know people who are, be on the lookout for these common symptoms. Consult with specialists if you notice these symptoms on yourself or on another person.

One Step at a Time

Diabetic fatigue, like the disease itself, is manageable. You just need to be more discerning when picking what to eat and the activities that you do and maintain a constant communication with your doctor. The latter is very important because diabetic fatigue can be the precursor of a more serious complication – your sugar might be dangerously high or low and this can very well lead to diabetic comatose. A condition that can be fatal.