How to know you have diabetes disease?

Every disease condition has its short story to tell. Some diseases however tell u a longer story until you understand them. Chronic diseases like diabetes may have a longer story for u to know that you have it. It takes care and watchfulness over time to know that this is diabetes.

Diabetes like any other disease gives signals and indicators to your body. Through these signals, if well identified and understood you will surely know that your body is suffering from diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, these signals may have an acute onset. It may take several years before the signals begin to manifest in type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes.

There are about 8 major symptoms that signal to your body that you may have Diabetes disease.

Excessive thirst and dry mouth.

When your body has a lot of sugar, the blood becomes concentrated. The sugar starts to pass through the filters in your kidneys. Normally this should not happen. When more sugar enters the urine, your kidneys will require more water to remove it and send it to your bladder. The kidneys, therefore, absorb more water.

This causes the volume of your urine to increase resulting in body dehydration. In this state of dehydration, you start feeling thirsty and develop a dry mouth. You will be forced to drink more water but remember sugar is still high in the blood. The cycle continues; drinking, absorption and dehydration.

Through this cycle, the diabetes patient will constantly feel thirsty and dry-mouthed.

Frequent and abundant urination.

Just like how thirst comes from the cycle described above. As the kidneys absorb more water to remove more sugar, the volume of urine formed at a particular time increases. This results in larger volumes of urine. The frequency of the number of times you wake up to urinate at night increases; reaching up to 6 times but anywhere above 3 times a night is very suspicious.

Lack of energy and tiredness.

The lack of energy in diabetes may be a result of the loss of too much water which causes dehydration. Dehydration comes with dizziness. The loss of water causes a decrease in blood pressure and the blood reaching the brain also tends to decrease. However, the most common cause of lack of energy in diabetes is the high sugar in the blood. Too much sugar in blood has a toxic effect on the cells, they lose the ability to take up sugar. The cells then fail to produce enough energy and this causes loss of energy and tiredness.

Needle &pins feeling and numbness in feet and hands.

Excess sugar in the blood affects blood vessels. Continued exposure of blood vessel cells to sugar results in the death of these cells. This cell death commonly affects the smaller vessels more than the bigger blood vessels. The smaller blood vessels supply nourishment to the nerves in the hands and feet, and other vital organs like kidneys and brain. When nerve cells lose blood supply they die, the pins and needles feeling is a result of this death. Further nerve damage results in numbness, that is, loss of feeling sensation. It starts from the hands and feet.

Recurrent fungal infections in the skin.

Excess blood sugar affects a whole range of body immune cells. In the skin, it affects the T lymphocytes. These are cells that help our skin fight off most of the disease-causing organisms in our environment. A reduction in the proper function of these T lymphocytes results in a reduced immunity of the skin. The fungus will easily grow on your skin which otherwise would not have grown with normal skin immunity. The most common fungus that affects diabetes people is the candida species. Candida on the skin manifests as whitish, itching patches, found in skin folds; under the breasts, in the groin, and the armpits.

Blurred vision

Too much sugar in the blood causes its increased absorption by the lens of the eye. This results in further absorption of too much water into the lens. This causes the lens to swell. A swollen lens cannot focus and form clear images at the back of the eye thus images become blurred. Blurred vision usually occurs in patients acutely when their blood sugar goes high rapidly.

Constant hunger

This condition is also known as polyphagia in the medical language. High levels of sugar are toxic to the muscle cells too. Too much sugar stops the work of insulin; pumping sugar into the cells. This condition is known as insulin resistance. So because sugar is not entering the muscle cells there is a lack of energy in the cells. The muscles so send hunger signals to the brain. This causes a feeling of hunger even when food has been eaten.

Unexplained weight loss.

Significant weight loss is common in patients with type 1 diabetes. In patients who have a mixed picture of type 1 and type 2, this symptom may be present. Unexplained weight loss is caused by a lack of enough insulin. Low insulin levels cause less sugar to be taken up into the body cells to produce energy. When the body fails to produce energy from sugar, it starts to produce it by eating up fat cells and muscle cells. This leads to significant weight loss in a short time.

Other symptoms include

• Bed wetting-this is common in type 1 diabetes
• Slow healing wounds-This is found in both Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes

If your body is experiencing several of the above symptoms, then count them as signals that you could be diabetic. This is especially true if your age is well above 35 and you are overweight or obese.

Be in the know to fight Diabetes visit us often at dimpedibateshealthpro.com for special knowledge on diabetes. Leave a comment in the comments section.

wishing you utmost good health-Afya bora zaidi