Type 2 diabetes is a sneaky illness. Many early signs and symptoms of this disease are often mild that they can be difficult to spot.
Some people do not even find out until they experience the damages that high blood sugar levels have caused to their health. There are also other patients that consider the early signs of fatigue or stress-related.
An endocrinologist named Dr. Susan Spratt from at Duke University School of Medicine says that it is normal for other people to be asymptomatic, even if they show positive results of abnormal blood sugar.
According to her, signs such as frequent urination, excessive thirst, and dry mouth can be determinants of early type 2 diabetes. This renowned doctor and professor is not lying about diabetes. If these three show up altogether, it should be enough reason to make you see a doctor.
So what are the other telltale warning signs of type 2 diabetes?
Hunger Associated with Fatigue
The cells in your body take up energy for your body to function correctly. This energy typically comes from the glucose of the food you eat. Insulin brings the glucose into the cells for it to be utilized. The only problem here is diabetic patients have issues with their insulin levels.
Some patients do not have enough, while some do not produce this hormone anymore. When your body does not produce enough or resists to produce any insulin, the glucose cannot get into the cells. It causes weakness, hunger, and fatigue.
An average person usually pees between four to six times in a day. But for people with diabetes, they go to the bathroom more often. Usually, the kidney filters our blood, expelling waste while reabsorbing glucose.
But for diabetic patient who has excess glucose in the blood, the kidneys react to it by flushing it out of the blood and into the urine. As a result, more fluids are expelled from the urine and the need to urinate frequently occurs.
For people with diabetes, drinking a lot of water due to excessive thirst is normal. It is a result of the excessive glucose in the bloodstream. When you have high blood sugar levels, your tissue tens to draw water away from your tissues, making you feel thirsty and a bit dehydrated. To quench this thirst, you need to drink plenty of water, which then leads to frequently urinating.
Patients with diabetes tend to become dehydrated, especially when they do not drink enough water. Because of this, it can lead to dry skin and other skin-related issues like dermatitis, psoriasis, and thrush. Whenever one scratches and cause a break in the skin, the body can send inflammatory chemicals which can then further intensify the itch and the need to scratch even more.
To some people with diabetes, the problems with eyesight can be a temporary problem. However, this can rapidly become serious when the condition gets worse. High blood sugar levels cause the lens of the eyes to swell up and affect its vision. This problem can be corrected by maintaining a healthy blood sugar level.
When these early signs and symptoms of diabetes become evident, it is best to seek a doctor’s advice about your health condition. Diabetes is not a manageable illness to care for. As it disrupts your body’s metabolic processes further, the complications can be dire. It could even cause death if left untreated.
Diabetes is an illness that could not be cured. But many have led healthy lives by managing their condition well. Aside from a healthy lifestyle, early detection of this disease is also vital. The earlier it is caught, the easier it is to reverse this illness.