Treatment options are different for each type of diabetes, although a healthy lifestyle that includes diet and exercise are important elements of all regimens. Careful monitoring and management will help keep diabetes under control and reduce the risk of long-term effects.

Patients diagnosed with type 1 diabetes will need insulin shots each day to replace insulin the pancreas can't produce. Gestational diabetes is usually treated with diet and insulin shots as needed.

Type 2 diabetes may be treated with oral medication and insulin shots. Oral medication can stimulate the pancreas to make more insulin, help the cells in the body use insulin, keep starches from being broken down into glucose in the intestines, and reduce the amount of glucose released from the liver.

Lifestyle
You can’t eliminate risk factors such as age, family history or ethnicity, but you can incorporate a healthy diet and increased physical activity into your day-to-day activities. Lifestyle changes are the most effective treatment for type 2 diabetes and can prevent the need for medicine.

Weight loss tops the list of recommended lifestyle changes (as little as 10 to 15 pounds can make a difference). Controlling high blood pressure, quitting smoking and drug use, and limiting alcohol consumption are also important.

A study done by the Harvard School of Public Health and published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that obesity was the single most important factor in predicting who would develop type 2 diabetes. The study found that at least 30 minutes of exercise a day and a diet low in fat and high in fiber significantly cut the risk for participants of developing type 2 diabetes.

Another study by the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study Group showed that a high-risk group that lost weight and improved physical activity reduced their risk of developing diabetes by more than 50 percent.