You should provide individualised and ongoing lifestyle advice, this should be in a form sensitive to the individuals needs, culture and beliefs, being sensitive to their willingness to change and the effects on their quality of life.

Dietary advice

Dietary modification plays a major role in the initial management of type 2 diabetes, aiming at a weight reduction in obese patients. Some patients can be adequately controlled by diet alone but most will eventually require drug therapy.

You can reinforce dietary advice and encourage the patient to reduce their consumption of fats and refined carbohydrate sugars) and increase the ingestion of unrefined carbohydrate (starches) to about half of the daily energy intake. A wide variety of foods should be included in the diet particularly those with a high dietary fibre content. As well as being beneficial in a number of other ways, dietary fibre may retard the absorption of sugars in the diet.

Fruit, vegetables and unrefined carbohydrates should make up the bulk of a person's diet. Special diabetic foods are not recommended as they may contain fructose, which has the same calorific content as sucrose or sorbitol which can cause diarrhoea.

Usually dietary management is used along for the first three months then if the patient still has significant hyperglycaemia, drug treatment is instigated.

Physical Inactivity

People with a sedentary lifestyle have an increase risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared with people who are physically active, therefore regular moderate exercise should be encouraged; ideally 30 minutes of moderate exercise at least five times per week. This depends on age, general health and fitness and how active the patient has been in the past. This could be done by vigorous gardening or housework. Trying to do some exercise every day has so many benefits that any amount is better than none. Even just a few minutes a day can improve general health and well-being.