Diabetes: Symptoms, Causes, & Treatment

Hello, I am Dr. Sonal, Endocrinologist. Today I will be telling you about the signs and symptoms of diabetes. One thing to keep in mind is that diabetes does not always show symptoms. In this case, it can only be detected by diagnosis. Diabetes does not have symptoms at an early stage. If the patient is at risk of diabetes, they are advised to get a screening done. 

What are the risk factors of diabetes? 

The conditions get very severe, like recurring urine infections, the kidneys start getting affected, the eyes are affected, the wounds don’t get better on their own. When these patients come to the doctor with unhealed wounds, then we diagnose them with diabetes, but by this time diabetes has already become severe.

Diabetes is a progressive disease, i.e. this disease progresses after the diagnosis, it becomes severe and severe with time. 

Why does it progress?

People suffer from diabetes as the beta cells that secret insulin from the pancreas becomes less decreasing the amount of insulin in the body. The other reason could be insulin resistance, which means the insulin secreted does not work properly.  Diabetes is a disease that should be treated at an early stage, if we wait for the symptoms to show, the disease had already progressed a lot. 

Starting symptoms:

It is important to know the minor symptoms that indicate that the person may be at risk of getting diabetes. One of these is tiredness, if you used to get tired while doing the work you always did without getting tired, then this may be a sign of diabetes. Sudden weight loss can be another sign of diabetes. If you are not on a  diet or are exercising but still losing weight, then you should get screened for diabetes. Hyperurination, if you are peeing more frequently than before, if you wake up at night to pee (which you did not do before) or if you go to the washroom twice but previously you only went once then it is abnormal and you should get tested for diabetes. Recurring urine infection is also a sign of diabetes. Getting boils on your body is another sign of diabetes. With progressing diabetes the self-healing of the body gets slower. Gradual loss of vision is also a major sign of diabetes. If you did not need glasses before but now you need numbered glasses to see that it could be a sign of diabetes. All these signs can be shown in people age 35-40 and higher, and if the person is at risk of diabetes. 

Diagnosis:

We will talk about the risk factor in the next video. Now we will talk about the different diagnoses that you can get done for diabetes.

1. Fasting blood sugar: for this, the patient has to fast for 8 hours prior to the blood test. If you ate dinner at about 11 pm then you can get the test done tomorrow at 7 am the next day. 
2. Postprandial blood sugar: this is done after 2 hours of eating lunch.  
3. Hemoglobin A1C test: this test is related t hemoglobin. The result of this test is an average of blood sugar for three months. This test very well indicates whether the person has diabetes or no. 

If the result for your diabetes test is negative, i.e. you don’t have diabetes. Then this does not mean that you can’t get diabetes in the near future. One should always be alert and have regular checkups if they have show signs of being at risk for diabetes. 

So in this video, we talked about the signs and symptoms, what tests to be done, and when to be done, do not wait for diabetes to progress especially when you are at risk and at above the age of 35. 

We will talk about the risk factors in the next video, this is it for today.

Thank you.