Diabetes mellitus is rapidly spreading around the world and it doesn't matter that scientists haven't discovered all the reasons why this disease can be. In this situation, a person can only be attentive to their body.
And let the symptom of another disease be mistaken for the manifestation of diabetes: if there is a suspicion, you should immediately seek clarification from the doctor (especially since there is also asymptomatic diabetes).
It is customary to qualify diabetes mellitus as an endocrinological pathology with a severe clinical picture. In this case, often the initial stages of the disease are asymptomatic or are characterized by polymorphism of the 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 (specifically) and food (in general);
- psychological readiness for damage to the body (state of stress).
Despite the search for new treatments for diabetes, sucrose continues to conquer the world in parallel. Sugar has the most exotic and seductive features: even the ketchup recipe is not complete without the addition of sugar, not to mention the unthinkable wedding cakes and breakfasts for seemingly innocent children.
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 health threat. A person has never eaten so much and often. Obsessive offers to eat have turned him into a creature that constantly chews - and the load on the pancreas, which has its own pace of life, becomes constant and threatening.
Alcoholic formulations serve both as a direct cause of glandular tissue necrosis and as a way to induce organ ischemia.
This also applies to:
- tobacco smoke;
- drug use;
- excessive addiction to drugs: sleeping pills, sedatives, pain relievers.
The second leading cause of diabetes is stress. And one of the stressors is the constant reminder of the diabetes threat, which chases a person everywhere. Alarmed by such a perspective, the mind creates a subconscious prerequisite for disease.
Another factor in the spread of diabetes around the world exists due to medical advances. If 100-150 years ago diabetic patients rarely had offspring, now the conditionality of the disease by inheritance has increased hundreds of times, 100% of diabetics give birth to the same diabetics with a high degree of probability.
The world has become an even more comfortable refuge for diabetes thanks to physical inactivity with its inevitable companions: obesity, constipation, osteoporosis, microthrombi and metabolic disorders in all body systems, against which the total pollution of the environment looks ( other reason for diabetes) like an innocent child.
Disease classification
According to the etiological (causal) classification, diabetes is distinguished:
- Type I (also called insulin dependent, or "juvenile");
- Type II (which is insulin independent);
- gestational (due to pregnancy);
- arising from reasons of another plan (due to previous infections, use of medicines or other).
There is a division of the disease into cases with varying degrees of severity:
- light;
- moderate;
- acute.
According to the level of the state of carbohydrate metabolism, diabetes can be:
- plywood;
- undercompensated;
- decompensated.
The classification based on 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 (kidney disease);
- diabetic foot (a separately isolated syndrome describing the pathology of blood vessels and other structures with the involvement of the lower limbs).
The clinical diagnosis, drawn up on the basis of the aforementioned systematic, provides a concise and comprehensive picture of the patient's condition already at 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 classic literal translation of the name of the disease from Latin (honey diabetes), diabetes mellitus has two main features:
- sweet taste of urine;
- frequent and profuse urination.
Doctors of the Middle Ages only suspected an excess of natural grape sugar in the blood - glucose, but they could corroborate the diagnosis in another way - by tasting the patient's urine. Because due to a disturbance in the renal filtration process, glucose in diabetes enters the urine (normally it shouldn't be there). Subsequently, the hypotheses 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 let oneself be guided by these canons even in the present era, remembering however that it is precisely the presence of both signs that testifies in favor of the sugar disease: sweet and abundant urine. Because diabetes can also be tasteless, but this is a completely different disease, the development of which is caused by completely different reasons.
With unmanifested (practically asymptomatic) or slow diabetes disease, the first signs may be its secondary symptoms (not characteristic of this particular pathology) in the form of:
- visual disturbances;
- headache;
- unjustified muscle weakness;
- dryness in the oral cavity;
- itching affecting the skin and mucous membranes (especially in the intimate area);
- skin lesions that are difficult to heal;
- a noticeable odor of acetone coming from the urine.
Their presence does not allow to diagnose type I or II of the disease: only a study of the pathology by a specialist doctor, as well as a study of the composition of the blood in combination with other tests, can distinguish them.
Specific characteristics
They are more characteristic of type I, they suddenly and forcefully approach, so 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 (profuse and frequent urination);
- polydipsia (unquenchable thirst);
- polyphagia ("wolf appetite" which does not lead to saturation);
- noticeable (and increasing) weight loss.
It should be noted that this is not about the temporary residence of a difficult period in life, after which everything returns to normal, but about the stable malaise of the body for weeks and months.
In addition to glucose, with its excess that does not become a nutrient, but a compound that breaks down the established metabolism and disrupts the natural biochemical balance in the body, substances with a toxic effect on structures accumulate in it:
- nerve tissue;
- hearts;
- kidneys;
- liver;
- ships.
The best known of these is acetone, well known to the brain for the state of poisoning that occurs after drinking an alcoholic beverage. The accumulation of acetone and other incompletely oxidized metabolic products leads to the failure of all body systems, mainly the nervous and vascular systems, which provide transport and communication in the body.
In a critical case (with a sharp rise or fall in blood sugar), diabetes can lead to the onset of coma, when circulatory disorders in the brain can lead to the patient's death.
In what cases is it impossible to postpone a visit to the doctor?
The answer to this question will become clear after some clarification.
Type I diabetes is the result of insufficient insulin production, 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 simply cannot reduce its content. As a result of an excess of glucose, it becomes a toxin that disrupts the normal course of all chemical reactions in the body, not only with regard 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 the blood supply to the tissues, while disruptions in the nutrition of the brain can provoke coma.
From here follow the sensations experienced by the patient, both having the character of small signs, and typical manifestations of diabetes:
- polyuria (diabetes) with sweet urine;
- polydipsia (appearance of thirst, not eliminated even by frequent and abundant drinking);
- polyphagia (indomitable greed);
- unexplained body 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 conduct the necessary initial studies.
The reason for becoming the subject of a thorough study can also be disorders of the nervous system caused by diabetes, detected by a neuropathologist, in the form of inexplicable:
- dizziness;
- nausea;
- noise and ringing in the ears;
- He retched;
- transient sensory or movement disturbances;
- perception and memory problems.
Small signs of diabetic vascular disease, manifested by eye symptoms, can also be deviations from the function of the organs of vision in the form of:
- reducing its severity;
- drying of the cornea (feeling of dryness, "sand", itching or pain in the eyes);
- blurring of the outlines of objects;
- ripples and flies in the eyes;
- periodic appearance of blind spots and loss of entire fields of vision;
- unexplained "darkening" in the eye.
The presence of diabetic vascularity can arouse primary interest in doctors of other profiles:
- with trophic skin disorders (formation of ulcers in the lower limbs) - to the surgeon;
- with non-healing skin lesions - to a dermatologist;
- with bleeding, non-healing of wounds in the mouth or the appearance of sores - to the dentist.
The reason for seeking immediate medical attention should be any case of sudden loss of consciousness, the onset of a condition characterized by "lost tongue", "numb arm", dizziness, accompanied by nausea and vomiting, although these symptoms can be explained. from alcohol or drug intoxication or from taking stable tablets prescribed by a doctor.