Diabetes is a chronic health condition that occurs when your blood glucose (blood sugar) is too high.
Most of the food that you eat contains glucose, which is broken down into sugar. When your blood sugar levels rises, it alerts the pancreas to release insulin. Insulin acts plays a major role to let the blood sugar into your body’s cells for use as energy.
In case you’ve got diabetes, your body stops making enough insulin or it just can’t use the insulin it makes. When your body hasn’t sufficient insulin or that cells that respond to insulin, too much blood sugar will stay in your bloodstream. This can further lead to serious health problems, like kidney disease, heart disease, and vision loss.
There are different types of diabetes and each type has several different causes, but they all are connected to the increased concentration of glucose in your blood. Treatments may include a few medications and insulin. To prevent some types of diabetes, you can adopt a healthy lifestyle.
Early Signs and Symptoms of Diabetes
How can you find if you have diabetes? Its most early signs and symptoms vary from higher-than-moderate levels of glucose in your blood. For type 1 diabetes, the symptoms may appear quickly, might be possible in just days or a few weeks. They’re much more acute too, than type 2.
The warning symptoms can be so mellow that you even don’t notice them (especially in case of type 2 diabetes). This may happen that you don’t find the signs out until getting into the major problems from chronic damages caused by the disease.
The general symptoms of diabetes include:
- Increased thirst and urination
- Blurred vision
- Fatigue
- Numbness or tingling in the feet or hands
- Sores that do not heal.
- Increased hunger
- Unexplained weight loss
Symptoms in men
Other than above general symptoms of diabetes, men with diabetes may notice following signs:
- Decrease sex drive
Male’s desire for sexual activity reduces due to diabetes. You should not confuse decrease libido (another name for sex drive) with erectile dysfunction (ED), although the two problems can co-exist in diabetes. Testosterone levels may drop because of decrease sex drive.
- Poor muscle strength
You may feel a lack of muscle strength. Poor strengthening of your muscles may be temporary or long-lasting (from seconds or minutes to months or years). The most important point to note is that poor muscles manifest as an overall sense of reduction of energy level and you may feel fatigue and muscles-specific inabilities to do your work effectively.
- Erectile dysfunction (ED)
This is trouble getting or keeping an erection that’s firm sufficient for the sex. As a result of diabetes, most often, the blood flow in men’s penis is limited and nerves are harmed.
Symptoms in women
Women with diabetes may feel:
- Worsening skin allergy
In diabetes, your skin may come into direct contact with an allergen causing skin allergy. As a result, red and itchy rashes may develop on your skin and may lead to small blisters or bumps.
Lack of moisture makes skin excessively dry. If you are a diabetic patient, you are more likely to develop dry skin. More often, you will feel yourself dehydrated all he day. Mouth may feel dry continuously. Dry skin can make your skin itchy, flaky, and cracked.
- Urinary tract infections
This happens when any part of your urinary system, your kidneys, ureters, bladder and urethra affect by diabetes. Most of the times, these infections involve the lower urinary tract, the bladder, and urethra.
- Yeast infections
Women are often diagnosed with yeast infections that feed on glucose. Yeast can grow in any wet and warm fold of skin. You can also notice yeast growth under breasts, in or around sex organs, and between fingers and toes.
Symptoms of Type 1 diabetes
The autoimmune reaction, in which body attacks itself by fault, stops your body from making insulin in type 1 diabetes. Almost 5-10% of the people are suffering from diabetes type 1 and often diagnosed in children, teens, and young adults. You need to take insulin regularly to survive if you have type 1 diabetes. The prevention for type 1 diabetes has not known yet.
Its symptoms can include:
- Extreme hunger
In diabetes, your body transforms the food you eat into glucose that your cells utilize for energy. But your cells require insulin to absorb glucose. When your body doesn’t make enough or any insulin, as in case of diabetes, or if your cells inhibit the insulin your body forms, the glucose can’t be acquired into them and ultimately you will have no energy.
- Increased thirst
Diabetes can make you hungrier, thirstier, and more tired than usual. This is because when your blood sugar level rises, your body stops reabsorbing glucose as it passes through your kidneys. As a result, you feel more hunger and thirst.
- Unexplained weight loss
When your body doesn’t get enough energy from the food, your muscles may start burning and fats getting used for energy instead. So, you may lose weight whether have changed your diet or not.
- Frequent urination
An average person usually has to pee between four to seven times in a day. But if you have diabetes, you may pee a lot more. This is because diabetes hypers your blood sugar level so your kidneys may not be able to absorb it all back in. This leads the body to urinate more and that takes fluids. The result is you’ll pee out more and feel thirstier. Also, when you drink more, you’ll also urinate more.
- Blurry vision
As diabetes change the fluid levels in your body, it can make the lenses in your eyes swell up. Eyes may suffer from blurry vision. They may change their usual shape and can’t concentrate.
- Extreme tiredness
Type 1 diabetes may also result in mood fluctuations.
Symptoms of Type 2 diabetes
Your body cannot keep blood sugar at its normal levels and doesn’t use insulin well in case of type 2 diabetes. Approximately, 90-95% of people have diabetes of type 2. It identified in adults (but much more in kids, teens, and young adults) usually. It’s extremely important to get your blood sugar level tested on regular basis because you may not notice any symptoms of type 2 diabetes. This can be prevented with healthy lifestyle adaptations including loss of weight, eating healthy food, and being active.
Symptoms of type 2 diabetes are:
- Nausea and vomiting
When your body tends to burn fat, it produces ketones. They may build up in your bloodstreams to another dangerous level, a possibly life-threatening disease known as diabetic ketoacidosis. Most probably, you’ll feel sickness in your stomach.
- Increased hunger
- Increased thirst
- Increased urination
- Pain or immobility in your feet or legs
Increased level of blood sugar in your body results in nerve damaging. That’s why you feel pain or numbness in your feet or legs.
- Blurry vision
- Tiredness
- Sores that are slow to heal
High blood sugar level can make hard for your body to heal wounds. It happens because of nerve damage leading to disrupting blood flow.
Type 2 diabetes may also lead to recurring infections because the elevated level of glucose makes it harder for the body to heal.
Symptoms of Gestational Diabetes
Gestational diabetes occurs in women during pregnancy, even though if they never had diabetes before. This is more likely to affect baby’s health. It may fade away after your baby is delivered but elevates your risk to develop type 2 diabetes later in your life and your child, probably, suffer from obesity as a child or teen, and more likely to deal with type 2 diabetes later in life as well.
Increased level of blood sugar during pregnancy mostly shows no symptoms. But you might become a little thirstier than usual or have to urinate more often.
Warning Signs- when diabetes becomes complicated
- Dark skin with velvety complex including changes in the neck, armpit, and groin, known as acanthosis nigricans.
- Itchy or dry skin (mostly around the vaginal or groin area)
- Recent weight gain
- Extremely decreased vision power
- Frequent yeast infections
- Harsh impotency and erectile dysfunction (ED)
- Slow-healing of the sores and cuts
- Tickling and formication of the hands and feet
