Treating type 1 diabetes involves monitoring your blood sugar and taking insulin shots for the rest of your life. It also involves lifestyle changes including increasing your activity level, eating right, and maintaining a healthy weight. Talking with your doctor or dietitian about exercises you can do and foods you can eat can help you improve your overall health.

If you are diabetic, the goal of treatment is to keep your blood sugar level within normal limits, ideally between 70 -140 mg/dL. Controlling your blood sugar not only prevents short term complications such as ketoacidosis, it can also reduce the risk of diabetes-related heart complications by 50 percent.

When you consume food, especially food that is high in carbohydrates, your blood sugar level will rise. Without insulin, your blood sugar continues to rise while your tissues starve. Injecting yourself with insulin helps clear the sugar from your blood and provide fuel for your cells. Your doctor can help you determine how often you should check and record your blood sugar; usually, it is several times each day. Blood sugar monitors come in many varieties, but all of them require a small amount of your blood to estimate your blood sugar level. Recent advances in technology have made blood sugar determination far less painful and time consuming, allowing diabetics to monitor their levels as often as is necessary.

Insulin is commonly self-administered by a shot into the abdomen, upper arms, thighs or hips. Another method of administration is an insulin pump which is implanted under the skin and continuously releases insulin into the blood.