Symptoms of diabetes
Typically, diabetes is symptomless at the beginning, so the diagnose is usually a surprise. Type 2 diabetes symptoms can occur as feelings of tiredness especially after eating, irritability, leg aches or sensitivity to infections.
Symptoms of type 2 diabetes
” Type 2 diabetes is rarely detected by symptoms. Often, it is detected by a coincidence for example at the yearly occupational health check or at a regular checkup. If type 2 diabetes runs in the family or more than one person has it in your family, it is advisable to do a diabetes risk test online. It can be found (in Finnish) from the Diabetes association page at www.diabetes.fiExternal link. The test asks you 10 questions and then gives you your risk points. If the risk points are notably high, it is important to go to the doctor to test your blood sugar level.” describes diabetologist Antti Virkamäki.
The risk factors with type 2 diabetes
Your lifestyle tells a lot about whether you belong in a diabetes risk group or not.
“If for example your weight has considerably increased or you are overweight, it increases the risk of getting sick with type 2 diabetes. If the amount of daily exercise is low or there is none, that also increases the risk. These risk factors can be detected self-evidently. Eating unhealthily is also a risk factor. All these three factors increase the risk of getting sick with the type 2 diabetes”, tells Virkamäki.
Not all very overweight people get sick with type 2 diabetes and in turn, there are also relatively skinny people with type 2 diabetes. The nature’s biological variation is quite noticeable.
” Also, the sugar metabolism gets even more complex with age. Actually about 30% of elderly people may have type 2 diabetes. It is not completely an age-related aspect, but age is for sure a risk factor.”, Virkamäki continues.
Weight loss with diabetes
In some cases, diabetes might cause weight loss.
” Sugar is an important source of energy for all of us. If a person loses sugar into urine, that is where it goes anyway after the blood’s sugar content increases as the body cannot keep inside this important energy source. This will lead to the person losing even big amounts of energy. The sugar therefore ends up in the urine and in the toilet. This is the reason for the weight loss.”, tells Virkamäki.
Other diseases caused by diabetes
Diabetes is linked to other diseases, which develop slowly over the years. The risk for a diabetic to have for example a heart attack or stroke is multiplied compared to a normal person who doesn’t have diabetes.
The leading cause of death with diabetes is artery diseases, meaning infarctions, strokes and different cardiovascular diseases. Smoking multiplies the risk to get an artery disease even more.
Symptoms of diseases related to diabetes
Additionally to the blood’s increased sugar content, often a diabetic’s blood pressure, blood’s cholesterol levels and the propensity for blood clots are raised, which speeds up arterial stenosis.
The risk for a diabetic to get a heart attack, stroke or atherosclerotic blockages in the lower limbs, meaning intermittent claudication is multiplied compared to a person who does not have diabetes.
“Sometimes the first symptom of long-term complications related to diabetes can be amputation or heart failure. A diabetes diagnosis is made the moment this kind of a complication shows up and the complication can be very serious and even fatal.
The pace in which these complications related to long-term diseases occur of course depends between people, but when talking about artery diseases, artery stenosis and the accumulation of cholesterol in the walls of the blood vessels, the classical risk factors are more difficult with a diabetic than with other people. For example, high cholesterol levels, hypertension and previously mentioned smoking speed up the dangerous process a lot in diabetes.
This is the reason we are interested in treating all the risk factors of artery diseases additionally to the blood sugar. This has to do with type 2 diabetes, but also type 1 diabetes. Quite many diabetics with type 1 diabetes also have these risk factors and they should be dealt with head on.”, Virkamäki tells.
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