diabetes treatment.
Gaslighting—making assumptions about your clients, not trusting their experience, ignoring client wishes and needs, or making clients feel exclusively responsible for their condition—can impair their self-efficacy and emotional and mental health.
Empathizing and supporting clients as they make sense of their health condition and how it is linked to outside factors involves trauma-informed treatment and motivational interviewing.
Being helpful and understanding builds trust, which lets clients know you care about them and have the resources and expertise to enhance their diabetes control. Your position may be more crucial if your client lacks a strong social network.
Grounding Recommendations To Fit The Individual
In the 15 minutes, doctors spend with patients, it’s unlikely that your client’s doctor could explain how to apply the advice to their lifestyle or answer questions. Health coaches working with diabetic clients must grasp diabetes pathology and treatment and management standards of care.
Then, they may assist clients in understanding how and why these protocols are critical for controlling their diabetes and support them in finding methods to fit them into their lifestyles. For instance, if your client’s primary doctor advised them to exercise three to five times a week, you may:
- Explain the difference between aerobic and anaerobic exercise.
- Tell them how exercise may improve their blood sugars and mood.
- Discover your client’s favorite exercises.
- Help your customer find methods that work for them.
This should cover finances, home and neighborhood surroundings, time availability, and personal likes and dislikes.
RELATED: Being Social with Diabetes: Staying Healthy & Happy
Identifying Strategies To Monitor Glucose & Take Medication
Many chronic diseases have global treatment and management guidelines. For diabetics:
- Glucose monitoring
- Medication
- technology
- Insulin pumps
- Supplements
Health coaches do not prescribe or question pharmacological treatments but may help clients incorporate them into their daily lives. In insulin-dependent diabetes, frequent glucose monitoring and insulin supply enhance health and save lives.
Making Lifestyle Changes Make Sense
Eating, relaxation, hydration, and exercise typically accompany medical and pharmacological therapies. Lifestyle modifications are overused and may reduce the difficulty of changing a person’s lifestyle.
After all, social, environmental, and psychological variables might affect diabetes risk and treatment behaviors, including eating, stress, physical exercise, and rest. Health coaches may teach clients to use illness management techniques and discover and use their skills in a manner that makes sense to them. This may mean:
- Helping clients overcome food issues.
- Suggestions for client-friendly movement.
- Offering client-specific applications, reminders, workshops, and support groups.
- With permission, sharing how realistic client actions might enhance diabetes treatment.
- Culturally appropriate meals and exercise.
- Allowing your client to invite them to sessions and provide information strengthens and empowers supportive connections.
RELATED: 5 Lifestyle Changes That Will Make You Look Younger
Your coaching style and area of expertise will determine how you offer lifestyle suggestions for your client, but guiding them through the diabetes cycle of care remains.