5 Symptoms Of Diabetes you should be aware of
Diabetes is the talk of the town at the moment with everyone from the age of Justin Bieber to Al Pacino being susceptible to this sugar monster.
Let’s look at what the disease is and what are the symptoms associated with it.
What is diabetes?
Diabetes is a medical condition where the sugar content in your bloodstream is higher than the recommended levels.
The blood sugar level in the morning known as the fasting level is the lowest.
The blood sugar level rises after a meal. So, the normal blood sugar level for a nondiabetic person is between 6.5 to 7.8 mmol/L and the normal blood sugar level for a diabetic person is approximately 10.0 mmol/L.
What are the symptoms of diabetes?
The 5 common symptoms of diabetes are:
Urge to urinate frequently, especially during the night
Unquenchable thirst
Tiredness and fatigue
Loss of weight
Thrush or itching in the genitals
What causes diabetes?
To analyze the reason behind diabetes, it’s essential to understand the role insulin plays in your bloodstream.
Insulin is a hormone which is secreted by the pancreas. This insulin is responsible for breaking down all the sugar you ingest, so that energy is stored in your body. If this insulin is absent or not able to carry out its function, the sugar in your body is not broken down and keeps on accumulating and leads to diabetes.
Insulin is the key that opens your cells to permit the entry of glucose and storage of energy. Now without that key, sugar just adds on which results in the cells of your body starving due to the absence of glucose.
The reasons why the insulin fails to work or is even absent are what give rise to different types of diabetes like:
Prediabetes
This is the most harmless stage of diabetes.
When your sugar level isn’t high enough to be categorized under actual diabetes, it’s called prediabetes.
Being careful prevents your prediabetes from turning into actual diabetes.
Type 1
At times the immune cells mistake insulin-producing cells as harmful and start resisting them. As a result, the production of insulin is eventually stopped.
The Islets are cells which detect sugar and produce insulin. Now the islets are under attack by their very hosts.
As there’s a shortage of insulin, treatment involves the supply of insulin from external sources in the form of injections or pills.
Type 2
This is the most common version of diabetes.
In this case, the insulin is produced just fine, but the insulin fails to “open” the cells. In other words, the insulin doesn’t quite have the key to convince your cells for the intake of glucose.
This is also called insulin resistance.
Treatment includes maintaining a balanced diet free from excess sugar and refined carbs. Working out and shedding excess fat is critical here.
Gestational diabetes
This diabetes occurs in pregnant women. Treatment consists of getting regular insulins shots and regulating the sugar content from time to time.
Don’t fret if you have diabetes. Keeping a positive mindset and doing your best will take you a long way. If you’re not, keep a check on your diet, work out often and cut down on the carbonated drinks, this will enormously reduce your risks of becoming diabetic.