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The medical name for diabetes is diabetes mellitus. It is a metabolic disease. The ability of your body that turns your food into energy is impacted when you get diabetes. Your body gets this energy from sugar. It is also called glucose. The food that you eat is broken down into sugar and then released into your bloodstream. This sugar is then absorbed by your body by a hormone called insulin.
Although insulin performs many metabolic functions in the body, one of its main responsibilities is to regulate the consumption and level of glucose and fat in your blood. It informs your liver and other muscles on how to absorb sugar and fat so that the energy can be distributed throughout your body. If there is additional sugar available, insulin signals liver to store this additional sugar as glycogen so that when the body is not receiving energy externally, it can be obtained internally through the stored glucose. A timely diabetes test can reveal the levels of sugar in your blood and hence, confirm whether you have diabetes or not.
When something goes wrong with insulin, your body doesn’t know how to handle glucose, leading to symptoms of diabetes. Insulin is produced by the pancreas. In diabetes, either not enough insulin is produced, or the insulin that is present is incapable of absorbing sugar, leading to higher levels of sugar in the blood.
What are the symptoms of diabetes?
There can be different symptoms for type I diabetes and type II diabetes.
Type I diabetes symptoms:
- Constantly feeling thirsty.
- Urinating often.
- Extreme fatigue.
- Feeling very hungry even when you have just eaten.
- Cuts and bruises are slow to heal.
- Blurry vision.
Type II diabetes symptoms:
- Urinating repeatedly at night.
- Constantly feeling very tired.
- Sudden weight loss.
- Strange tingling in the feet that can be painful sometimes.
- Cuts and wounds take a very long time to heal.
- Blurry vision or even blindness in some cases.
Types of diabetes
Mainly there are three types of diabetes: type I, type II and gestational diabetes (diabetes when pregnant).
Type I diabetes
It is known to be an autoimmune disease. It means, the body begins to attack itself by mistake. In most of the cases, the body stops making insulin and you need to take insulin either through tablets or syringe. It is a less prevalent type of diabetes among the diabetes patients with around 5-10% people having type I diabetes. It is usually diagnosed in children, teens, and adults. In type I diabetes, you need to take insulin every day. It is not yet known how type I diabetes can be prevented.
Type II diabetes
Your body might be using insulin, but it doesn’t use the hormone well and cannot keep the levels of blood sugar in your blood in safe proportions. 90-95% of people who have diabetes have type II diabetes. It doesn’t manifest suddenly, and it may take many years to show the symptoms. Hence, it is very important to get your blood sugar level tested through the diabetes test even when you spend a normal lifestyle. Type II diabetes can be prevented or delayed by following a healthy lifestyle such as losing excess weight, regular exercise and eating healthy food.
Gestational diabetes
This type of diabetes develops in pregnant women even if they have never had diabetes before. There can be health problems for the baby if the pregnant woman develops gestational diabetes. The diabetes goes away after the baby is born, but there is an increased risk of the child getting type II diabetes later in life. The child may also be obese in the early years or during teens.