When you hear the term “diabetes,” the first thing that usually comes to mind is elevated blood sugar. Blood sugar levels are frequently overlooked as a factor in overall health. When it becomes out of balance over an extended length of time, it may develop into diabetes. Diabetes impairs your body’s capacity to generate or use insulin, a hormone that enables glucose (sugar) to be converted to energy. Here are some of the symptoms that your body may experience when diabetes takes hold.
When detected early, diabetes can be efficiently treated. However, untreated problems, including heart disease, stroke, kidney damage, and nerve damage, may result. Normally your body breaks down sugars from your meals and uses them for energy in the cells after you eat or drink. Your pancreas has to generate a hormone called insulin to do this. Insulin helps the blood sugar extracting process and puts it into cells for usage or energy.
If you have diabetes, your pancreas produces either too little or no insulin. Insulin cannot be efficiently utilised. This enables blood glucose levels to increase, but the remainder of your cells lack much energy. This can lead to a range of issues that impact almost every major bodily system.
What are the different diabetes types?
Diabetes also depends on the sort of influence on your body. Two primary diabetes kinds exist: type 1 and type 2.
Type 1, commonly referred to as juvenile diabetes or diabetes based on insulin, is a disease of the immunological system. Your own immune system assaults the pancreatic insulin-producing cells, eliminating the capacity of your body to generate insulin. You must take insulin to survive with type 1 diabetes. The majority of individuals are diagnosed as children or young adults.
Type 2 is connected to resistance to insulin. It used to be found in elderly populations, but today more and more young people are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. This is a consequence of bad lifestyle, nutrition and practise.
With type 2 diabetes, your pancreas effectively quits using insulin. This leads to problems in pulling sugar from the blood and placing it in the energy cells. This can eventually lead to the need for insulin.
Earlier phases such as prediabetes can be controlled well with diet, exercise and careful blood sugar surveillance. The entire development of type 2 diabetes can potentially be prevented. Diabetes can be managed. In certain situations it can be even remitted if there are adjustments to the appropriate lifestyle.
High blood sugar that develops during pregnancy is gestational diabetes. You can control gestational diabetes most of the time by eating and exercising. It usually resolves following delivery of the baby. Gestational diabetes might raise your risk of pregnancy problems. It can also raise the chance of developing type 2 diabetes in both mother and child later in life.
Systems Endocrine, Excretory, and Digestive
If your body generates little or no insulin, or if it cannot use other hormones, fat becomes energy. This can produce high hazardous substances, including acids and ketone bodies, which can lead to a condition called diabetes ketoacidosis. This is a severe illness complication. Extreme thirst, increased urine and tiredness are the symptoms.
Your breath may have a pleasant smell produced by the high blood ketone levels. High blood sugar and high ketones may confirm diabetic ketoacidosis in your urine. This disease may result in loss of consciousness or even death if untreated.
Hyperosmolar diabetic syndrome (HHS) develops in type 2 diabetes. Hyperosmolar diabetes. The blood glucose levels are quite high yet there are no ketones. With this condition, you may get dehydrated. You could possibly lose awareness. HHS is more frequent in persons with undiagnosed diabetes or who have not managed to control diabetes. It might be caused by a heart attack, stroke or infection as well.
High levels of blood glucose may lead to gastroparesis – when your stomach is difficult to empty entirely. This delay might lead to an increase in blood glucose levels. This can also lead to nausea, vomiting, bloating and heartburn.
What Damage diabetes can cause to Kidney?
Diabetes can also harm your kidneys and can impair your blood waste filtering capability. It might be an indication that your renals do not work correctly, if your doctor discovers microalbuminuria or increased levels of protein in your urine. Diabetic nephropathy is known as kidney disease associated with diabetes. It shows no symptoms till its latter stages. If you have diabetes, your doctor will assess nephropathy to avoid permanent damage to your kidney or kidney.
What damage Diabetes can cause to Circulatory system?
Diabetes increases your chances of high blood pressure that increases your heart strain. This can help the development of fatty deposits in blood vessel walls when you have high blood glucose levels. Over time, blood flow can be reduced and the risk of atherosclerosis or blood vessel hardening increased.
Diabetes increases your risk of heart and stroke according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Good dietary habits and regular exercise can help decrease the risk of high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels, as well as monitoring and regulating your blood glucose.
If you are at risk of diabetes, you should also consider stopping smoking. Smoking and diabetes are a really terrible combo. It raises the risk of heart disease and reduced blood flow. Blood flow deficiency might eventually impact your hands and feet and create pain when you walk. This is referred to as intermittent claudication. The tight blood arteries in your legs and feet are also likely to create issues in these areas. For example, because of loss of feeling, your feet may feel chilly or you may not be able to feel hot. This disease is known as peripheral neuropathy, a form of diabetic neuropathy that produces lower feeling in the limbs. It is especially hazardous as it might prevent you from recognising an illness or damage.
Diabetes also raises your risk of infections or foot ulcers. Poor blood flow and nervous damage increase the chance of an amputation of the foot or leg. It is important if you have diabetes that you treat your feet well and check them regularly.
What damage Diabetes can cause to skin?
Diabetes can also damage your skin, your body’s biggest organ. In addition to dehydration, the lack of moisture in your body due to high blood sugar may cause the skin of your feet to dry out and crack. It is vital to dry your feet fully after bathing or swimming. You may apply petroleum jelly or mild creams, but do not allow them get too moist.
Moist, heated creases on the skin are sensitive to infections with fungus, bacteria or yeast. They tend to grow between your fingers and your toes, your neck, your armpits or your mouth’s corners. Redness, blistering, and itching are symptoms.
Under your foot, high-pressure areas may develop to calluses. These can be infected or ulcers might form. If you have an ulcer, contact your doctor straight away to reduce the danger of your foot loss. You may also be more likely to be boiled, folliculitis (hair follicle infection), sties, and infected nails.
What damage Diabetes can cause to Central Nervous System?
Diabetes causes neuropathy or nerve damage. This might alter your heat, cold and pain perception. It can also make you more injury-prone. There is an increasing likelihood that you may not detect these injuries and allow them to become major illnesses or disorders.
Diabetes can also cause, known as diabetic retinopathy, to enlarged, leaky eye vessels. This can harm your vision. It can even result in blindness. At first, symptoms of eye disorder may be modest, therefore you need to see your eye surgeon often.
What damage Diabetes can cause to Reproductive System?
During pregnancy, altering hormones can cause gestational diabetes and raise your risk of high blood pressure. Two forms of high blood pressure disorders are observed for pregnant women, pre-eclampsia or eclampsia. In most situations, gestational diabetes is treated simply and once the baby is born, glucose levels become normal. Symptoms are comparable to other kinds of diabetes, but might include recurrent vaginal and bladder infections.
Your child may have a greater birth weight if you acquire gestational diabetes. This can complicate delivery. You also have an elevated chance of acquiring type 2 diabetes many years after birth.
The Bottom Line
Diabetes develops when blood sugar levels are too high for a person. High blood sugar levels may eventually impact all regions of the body and cause numerous problems, some serious. A person with high blood glucose levels will notice in the near term that they feel sedate and need to pee often. If this occurs, a doctor should check whether or not he is diagnosed with diabetes. Diabetes can lead to disorientation and perhaps a loss of consciousness, coma, and death without treatment.
Diabetes raises the risk of damage to blood vessels and nerves over the long run, leading to a wide range of problems.
The longer a diabetes is, the more probable it is to develop heart disease and other complications.
References
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30131033/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20500966/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5980990/
Sirisha B