The Symptoms Of Diabetes
Type 1diabetes usually has obvious symptoms, such as frequent urination, increased thirst, weight loss, extreme hunger, fatigue, blurred vision, and frequent infections such as skin, bladder or urinary tract infections. Type 2 often develops slowly, showing few or no symptoms of diabetes. This may explain why it often goes unnoticed at first. On average, people have the disease for 9 to12 years before they're diagnosed. Experts are now recommending that people ages 45 or older be regularly tested for diabetes and be aware of what the symptoms of diabetes are.
What are the symptoms of type 1 diabetes? When beta cells stop producing insulin, your body's cells absorb less glucose, while your liver releases more, resulting in a dramatic rise in blood sugar levels to as much as 10 times above the normal. The excess sugar "spills" into your urine, drawing water with it. This accounts for the frequent urination and an increase in thirst. It can also lead to dehydration. You may also notice that while your appetite has increased, you've lost weight. This happens because your cells are literally starving from a lack of nutrition and from the loss of sugar. Dehydration also contributes to weight loss. You may also feel fatigued and irritable, and your vision may be blurry because high sugar levels can change the shape of the lens in your eye and impair its ability to focus. The start of symptoms in type 1 diabetes is usually abrupt and severe, occurring within days of onset. Hyperglycemia happens rapidly and leads to dehydration and insulin deficiency causes other metabolic problems, including the unregulated breakdown of fat stores. This releases fatty acids, which are further broken down to ketones, products of fat digestion that accumulate in the blood. If your ketone concentration gets too high, your blood becomes acidic and diabetic ketoacidosis may occur, sending you into a coma. Fortunately, this symptom of diabetes can usually be averted or treated.
Symptoms of type 2 diabetes Because blood sugar levels rise slowly, the symptoms of type 2 diabetes may develop over years or may not occur at all. The early signs and symptoms are the same as for type 1 diabetes: repeated trips to the bathroom, thirst, and fatigue, but they may develop gradually enough to be overlooked. Other symptoms can include recurrent urinary infections, bladder infections, and tingling or numbness in the hands and feet as a result of nerve damage.If you are showing any of these symptoms of diabetes or suspect that you might have diabetes, see a doctor right away. Your doctor will take a full medical history and will probably perform one of three simple blood tests: a random plasma glucose test, a fasting plasma glucose test, or an oral glucose tolerance test. A fourth test, the glycosylated hemoglobin test, is used to monitor diabetes after a diagnosis has been made. All these tests require is a small blood sample that will be analyzed for glucose content.
|