Diabetes mellitus is spreading rapidly around the world and it does not matter that scientists have not discovered all the reasons why this disease can be. In this situation, a person can be attentive only to his body.
And let the symptom of another disease be confused with the appearance of diabetes - if there is a doubt, you should immediately seek clarification from a doctor (especially since there is also asymptomatic diabetes).
It is customary to describe diabetes mellitus as an endocrinological pathology with a severe clinical picture. In this case, often the initial stages of the disease are asymptomatic or characterized by polymorphism of manifestations. However, there are some signs of pathology, which you can learn about from the material below.
Causes of diabetes
Despite the apparent abundance of reasons for the disease, its main causes are two:
- sugar (in particular) and food (in general);
- psychological readiness for body damage (stress state).
Despite the search for new treatments for diabetes, sucrose continues to conquer the world in parallel. Sugar is given the most exotic and seductive guises – even a tomato ketchup recipe isn't complete without added sugar, not to mention unimaginable wedding cakes and seemingly innocent children's breakfasts.
Reference. Most fruits and natural fruits do not contain sucrose - it is produced from the juice of plants that are not consumed raw by humans. Therefore, it can be attributed to artificially obtained chemical compounds.
Food in general has also become a threat to health. A person has never eaten so much and so often. Obsessive offers to eat have turned him into a creature that constantly chews - and the load on the pancreas, which has its own rhythm of life, becomes constant and threatening.
Alcoholic formulations serve as a direct cause of glandular tissue necrosis and as a way to induce organ ischemia.
This also applies to:
- smoking;
- drug use;
- excessive drug addiction: sleeping pills, sedatives, tranquilizers.
The second leading cause of diabetes is stress. And one of the levers of stress is the constant reminder of the threat of diabetes, following a person everywhere. Alarmed by such a prospect, the mind creates a subconscious precondition for disease.
Another factor in the worldwide spread of diabetes exists because of advances in medicine. If 100-150 years ago, diabetic patients rarely had offspring, now the conditioning of the disease by heredity has increased hundreds of times, diabetics 100% give birth to the same diabetics with a high degree of probability.
The world has become an even more comfortable shelter for diabetes thanks to physical inactivity with its inevitable companions: obesity, constipation, osteoporosis, microthrombi and metabolic disorders in all body systems, against which total environmental pollution appears (another reasonfor diabetes). like an innocent child.
Classification of the disease
According to the etiological classification (cause), diabetes is distinguished:
- Type I (also called insulin-dependent, or "juvenile");
- Type II (which is independent of insulin);
- gestational (due to pregnancy);
- arising for reasons of another plan (due to past infections, use of drugs or otherwise).
There is a division of the disease in cases with different degrees of severity:
- light;
- moderate;
- heavy.
According to the level of carbohydrate metabolism, diabetes can be:
- is compensated;
- undercompensated;
- decompensated.
Classification according to the presence of complications includes diabetic consequences in the form of:
- micro- or macroangiopathies (vascular lesions);
- neuropathies (damage to nerve tissue and its structures);
- retinopathy (damage to the organs of vision);
- nephropathy (renal pathology);
- diabetic foot (a separate syndrome that describes the pathology of blood vessels and other structures with the involvement of the lower extremities).
The clinical diagnosis, compiled on the basis of the above system, gives a brief and broad picture of the patient's condition from the first reading. It is enough for a person without special education to know about the existence of 2 types and 3 degrees of severity of the disease.
The first symptoms of the disease
As is clear from the literal classical translation of the name of the disease from Latin (honey diabetes), diabetes mellitus has two main characteristics:
- sweet taste of urine;
- frequent and abundant urination.
Medieval doctors suspected only an excess of natural grape sugar in the blood - glucose, but they could confirm the diagnosis in another way - by tasting the patient's urine. Because due to a disorder in the filtering process of the kidneys, glucose in diabetes enters the urine (normally it should not be there). Later, the assumptions of the fathers of medicine were brilliantly confirmed - the disease also includes hyperglycemia (an excessive amount of glucose in the blood).
It is possible to be guided by these canons even in today's era, remembering, however, that it is precisely the presence of two signs that testify in favor of the sugar disease: sweet and abundant urine. It can also be insipidus for diabetes, but this is a completely different disease, the development of which is caused by completely different reasons.
With unmanifest (practically asymptomatic) or slow diabetes disease, the first signs may be its secondary symptoms (uncharacteristic for this particular pathology) in the form of:
- visual disturbances;
- headache;
- unjustified muscle weakness;
- dryness in the oral cavity;
- itching involving the skin and mucous membranes (especially often in the intimate area);
- skin lesions difficult to heal;
- a noticeable smell of acetone coming from the urine.
Their presence does not allow the diagnosis of type I or II of the disease - only a pathology study by a specialist doctor, plus a blood composition study in combination with other tests, can distinguish them.
Specific characteristics
They are more characteristic of type I, they approach suddenly and strongly, therefore the patient can report not only the year of their appearance, but also the month (up to the week associated with a certain event).
These include having:
- polyuria (abundant and frequent urination);
- polydipsia (unquenchable thirst);
- polyphagia ("wolf's appetite" that does not bring satiety);
- noticeable (and increasing) weight loss.
It should be noted that it is not about the temporary stay of some difficult period of life, after which everything returns to normal, but about a stable state of the body for weeks and months.
In addition to glucose, since its excess does not become a nutrient, but a component that breaks the established metabolism and disrupts the natural biochemical balance in the body, substances with a toxic effect on the structures accumulate in it:
- nerve tissue;
- hearts;
- kidneys;
- liver;
- dishes.
The best known of them is acetone, well known to the brain for the state of intoxication that comes after drinking an alcoholic drink. The accumulation of acetone and other metabolic products not fully oxidized leads to the failure of all body systems, primarily the nervous and vascular systems, which provide transport and communication in the body.
In a critical case (with a sharp increase or decrease in blood glucose), diabetes can lead to the appearance of a coma, when blood circulation disorders in the brain can lead to the death of the patient.
In which cases is it impossible to postpone a visit to the doctor?
The answer to this question will become clear after some clarifications.
Type I diabetes is the result of insufficient production of insulin, which limits blood glucose levels. In the type II variant, insulin is sufficient, but due to the characteristics of the body, its ability to regulate blood sugar is limited - insulin is simply not able to reduce its content. As a result of an excess of glucose, it turns into a toxin that disrupts the normal flow of all chemical reactions in the body, not only in relation to carbohydrate metabolism.
It is the level of tissue metabolism disorders and the body's ability to compensate for these disorders that determine the severity of diabetes.
With a mild course, the glucose level does not exceed the threshold of 8 units (mmol / l), its daily fluctuations are insignificant.
The moderate form is characterized by an increase in glucose already up to 14 units with episodes of ketosis-ketoacidosis (an excess of acetone and similar substances in the blood), which is fraught with vascular disorders.
In severe cases, the glucose level exceeds 14 units, its fluctuations during the day are significant - there are serious problems with blood supply to tissues, while interruptions in brain nutrition can provoke coma.
From here follow the sensations experienced by the patient, either having the character of small signs, or the typical manifestations of diabetes:
- polyuria (diabetes) with sweet urine;
- polydipsia (appearance of thirst, not eliminated even by frequent and abundant drinking);
- polyphagia (voracious gluttony);
- unmotivated weight loss.
The presence of this syndrome (complex of signs) is a good reason to visit an endocrinologist or, in the absence of this specialist, a therapist who will carry out the necessary initial studies.
The reason to become the object of close study may also be the disorders of the nervous system caused by diabetes, discovered by a neuropathologist, in the form of the unexplained:
- dizziness;
- nausea;
- tinnitus and tinnitus;
- vomiting;
- temporary sensory or movement disturbances;
- problems with perception and memory.
Small signs of diabetic vascular disease, manifested with eye symptoms, can also be deviations from the function of the organs of vision in the form of:
- reducing its severity;
- dryness of the cornea (feeling of dryness, "sand", itching or pain in the eye);
- blurring the contours of objects;
- ripples and flies in the eyes;
- periodic appearance of blind spots and loss of entire fields of vision;
- unexplained "darkness" in the eyes.
The presence of diabetic vascular disease may cause a primary appeal to doctors of other profiles:
- with trophic disorders of the skin (formation of ulcers in the lower extremities) - to the surgeon;
- with non-healing skin lesions - to a dermatologist;
- with bleeding, non-healing wounds in the mouth or the appearance of wounds - to the dentist.
The reason to immediately seek medical help should be any case of sudden loss of consciousness, the onset of a condition characterized by "lost language", "numb arm, leg", dizziness, accompanied by nausea and vomiting, even if these symptoms can be explained by alcohol or drug intoxication or taking stable pills prescribed by a doctor.