{"id":1201,"date":"2019-11-30T18:55:24","date_gmt":"2019-11-30T18:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maderatribustg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=1201"},"modified":"2026-05-13T18:28:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T18:28:06","slug":"diabetes-advocate-encourages-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/diabetes-advocate-encourages-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Diabetes advocate encourages control"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former Madera Coyotes cross country champion and current ambassador with Team Novo Nordisk, Benny Madrigal, encourages people to take control of their lives when it comes to diabetes.<\/p>

\u201cI am putting a challenge out there to those people who are diagnosed with diabetes to go out and take control and take the initiative to do something about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>

Team Novo Nordisk ambassadors are elite and former professional athletes who have diabetes and travel the globe representing the team\u2019s mission to inspire, educate and empower everyone affected by diabetes.<\/p>

\u201cOur goal for Team Novo Nordisk is to get information out,\u201d Madrigal said. \u201cOne of the biggest thing that is important is Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes doesn\u2019t have a cure. You\u2019re either in control or not. The least prescribed medication is exercise. Everyone on our team is an example of that. When you are in control, you feel good and you feel great. That\u2019s why some people may think they are cured. As soon as you get back to bad habits or don\u2019t do things that kept you in control, that\u2019s when you start noticing the symptoms coming back.\u201d<\/p>

Madrigal has been trying to educate the Madera community throughout November, which is Diabetes Awareness Month.<\/p>

\u201cI really want my community to take care of themselves,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want people to go out and control their lives. Get out there and get moving. If you like to get on a bike, ride or dance, dance. Be as active as possible. Set some goals for yourself with some checkpoints.Where you are now is not where you are going to be in a month.\u201d<\/p>

Madrigal, who has been diagnosed with diabetes since he was out of high school, has been with team Novo Nordisk since 2010 and has been running races to show that lives don\u2019t have to be changed because one has diabetes.<\/p>

\u201cI run into too many people that have given up,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s time to take control and say \u2018I have diabetes, so what do I do now.\u2019 They really need to take the initiative of owning it. I recall when I first got diagnosed, it took me months to do that. I kept thinking of beating this thing and making it go away. It was the wrong approach and I was losing. When I took control and I said, \u2018I have diabetes and I have to do something.\u2019 That\u2019s when things started to change and I started feeling better.<\/p>

“It\u2019s definitely not easy, but it\u2019s something every day. Every day changes, though. It\u2019s being flexible and being aware that if you win four out of seven days out of the week, you have realistic goals and it\u2019s not your fault. It\u2019s genetics. It\u2019s an autoimmune disease. You can\u2019t beat yourself up. You have this and how are you going to fight this. You have to be patient. People that take care of themselves, the best still have the highs and lows. But they spend less time on both of those.\u201d<\/p>

One of the ways to deal with diabetes is to keep it under control. Not to get one\u2019s blood sugar levels too low or too high.<\/p>

\u201cControl means your lifestyle won\u2019t be as good when you\u2019re not in control,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen your blood sugar is good, you have more energy to do the things you want to do. You take control of your life.<\/p>

\u201cHaving high blood sugar for a long time will lead to a lot more issues and put you in the danger zone of not living the life you want to live. I don\u2019t want anybody to wait to lose a foot or toe to do something about this.\u201d<\/p>

One way to control diabetes is to listen to your doctor and do as directed. Another way is to test one\u2019s blood sugar multiple times during the day.<\/p>

\u201cSeveral people test in the morning and night, but they can test a couple more times so they have an idea of what\u2019s happening throughout the day,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you take it two times a day, even if your numbers are good, you don\u2019t know how your body is through the day.\u201d<\/p>

Even in the short time since Madrigal was diagnosed, he has noticed the improvement of the equipment and medicine to help keep diabetes in control.<\/p>

\u201cYears ago, diabetes used to be a death sentence,\u201d he said. \u201cNow, we are seeing more people living long lives without the scares of the past. There\u2019s technology and great medicine. The needles are so small. It\u2019s so easy to take care of yourself much more than before.\u201d<\/p>

More than anything else, Madrigal wants to get the word out about diabetes. He also says that just because you have diabetes, it doesn\u2019t mean your whole life has to change because of it. Madrigal tries to be an example of just because you have diabetes, it doesn\u2019t mean you still can\u2019t run a marathon, which Madrigal has done.<\/p>

\u201cIf you don\u2019t take control of diabetes, it will control you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Madera Coyotes cross country champion and current ambassador with Team Novo Nordisk, Benny Madrigal, encourages people to take control of their lives when it comes to diabetes. \u201cI am putting a challenge out there to those people who are diagnosed with diabetes to go out and take control and take the initiative to do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":27516,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_angie_page":false,"page_builder":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[32,40],"class_list":["post-1201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-culture","tag-health"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}