Diabetes mellitus is rapidly spreading around the world, and it doesn't matter that scientists haven't figured out all the reasons why this disease can be. In this situation, a person can only be attentive to his body.
And let the symptom of another disease be confused with the manifestation of diabetes - if there is a suspicion, you should seek clarification from the doctor immediately (especially since there is also asymptomatic diabetes).
It is customary to qualify diabetes mellitus as an endocrinological pathology with a serious clinical picture. In this case, the initial stages of the disease are often asymptomatic or are characterized by polymorphism of manifestations. However, there are certain signs of pathology, which you can learn 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 take over the world in parallel. Sugar gets the most exotic and alluring looks - even the tomato ketchup recipe isn't complete without the addition of sugar, not to mention unthinkable wedding cakes and seemingly innocent kids' breakfasts.
Reference. Most natural fruits and berries 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 chemical compounds obtained artificially.
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 chews constantly - and the load on his pancreas, which has its own rhythm 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:
- smoking;
- use of drugs;
- drug addiction: sleeping pills, sedatives, pain relievers.
The second leading cause of diabetes is stress. And one of the levers of stress is the constant reminder of the threat of diabetes, chasing a person everywhere. Alarmed by such a prospect, the mind creates a subconscious prerequisite for illness.
Another factor in the spread of diabetes throughout the world is due to advances in medicine. If 100-150 years ago, diabetic patients rarely had children, 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 haven for diabetes thanks to physical inactivity with its inevitable companions: obesity, constipation, osteoporosis, microthrombi and metabolic disorders in every system of the body, against which total pollution of the environment (another reason for diabetes) looks like an innocent baby.
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 another plan (due to past infections, medication use or otherwise).
There is a division of the disease into cases with varying degrees of severity:
- Light;
- moderate;
- strong.
According to the level of carbohydrate metabolism state, diabetes can be:
- plywood;
- undercompensated;
- decompensated.
Classification by the presence of complications includes diabetic consequences in the form of:
- micro or macroangiopathies (vascular lesions);
- neuropathies (damage to nervous tissue and its structures);
- retinopathy (damage to the organs of vision);
- nephropathy (renal pathology);
- diabetic foot (a separately isolated syndrome that describes the pathology of blood vessels and other structures with involvement of the lower extremities).
The clinical diagnosis, compiled on the basis of the above systematic, provides a brief and broad picture of the patient's condition already in its first reading. It is enough for a person without special education to know of 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 characteristics:
- sweet taste of urine;
- frequent and abundant urination.
Doctors in the Middle Ages only suspected an excess of natural grape sugar in the blood - glucose, but they could substantiate the diagnosis otherwise - by tasting the patient's urine. Because due to a disturbance in the kidney filtration process, glucose in diabetes enters the urine (normally it shouldn't 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 the current era, remembering, however, that it is precisely the presence of both signs that attests in favor of the sugar disease: sweet and abundant urine. For diabetes it 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 (uncharacteristic of this pathology in particular) in the form of:
- visual disturbances;
- headaches;
- unwarranted muscle weakness;
- dryness in the oral cavity;
- itching involving the skin and mucous membranes (especially in the intimate area);
- difficult-to-heal skin lesions;
- 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 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 features
They are more characteristic of type I, they approach suddenly and powerfully, so the patient can report not only the year of their appearance, but also the month (even the week associated with a certain event).
These include having:
- polyuria (profuse and frequent urination);
- polydipsia (insatiable thirst);
- polyphagia ("wolf appetite" that does not bring saturation);
- noticeable (and increasing) weight loss.
It should be noted that it is not about the temporary residence of any difficult period of 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 becoming not a nutrient, but a compound that breaks the established metabolism and disturbs the body's natural biochemical balance, substances with a toxic effect accumulate in the structures:
- nervous tissue;
- hearts;
- kidneys;
- liver;
- vessels.
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 systems in the body, particularly 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 onset of coma, when circulatory disorders in the brain can lead to the death of the patient.
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 is simply not able to reduce its content. As a result of an excess of glucose, it becomes a toxin that interrupts the normal course of all chemical reactions in the body, not just 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 light course, the glucose level does not exceed the threshold of 8 units (mmol / l), its daily fluctuations are negligible.
The moderate form is characterized by an increase in glucose already up to 14 units with episodes of ketosis-ketoacidosis (excessive 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 interruptions in the nutrition of the brain can provoke a coma.
From here follow the sensations experienced by the patient, whether having the character of small signs, or typical manifestations of diabetes:
- polyuria (diabetes) with sweet urine;
- polydipsia (appearance of thirst, not eliminated even by frequent and abundant drinking);
- polyphagia (indomitable gluttony);
- unmotivated body weight loss.
The presence of this syndrome (signal complex) 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 for becoming an object of careful study can also be nervous system disorders caused by diabetes, detected by a neuropathologist, in the form of unexplained:
- dizziness;
- nausea;
- noise and ringing in the ears;
- vomiting;
- transient sensory or movement disorders;
- perception and memory problems.
Minor signs of diabetic vascular disease, manifested by eye symptoms, can also be deviations in the function of the organs of vision in the form of:
- reducing its severity;
- corneal dryness (feeling dry, "sandy", itchy or painful in the eyes);
- blurring the contours of objects;
- ripples and flies in the eyes;
- periodic occurrence of blind spots and loss of entire fields of vision;
- inexplicable "darkening" in the eyes.
The presence of diabetic vascular disease may have a primary appeal to physicians of other profiles:
- with trophic skin disorders (ulcer formation on the lower extremities) - to the surgeon;
- with skin lesions that do not heal - to a dermatologist;
- with bleeding, non-healing of mouth sores or appearance of sores - to the dentist.
The reason for seeking immediate medical help should be any case of sudden loss of consciousness, the appearance of a condition characterized as "tongue loss", "arm, leg numbness", dizziness, accompanied by nausea and vomiting, even if these symptoms can be explained by alcohol or drug intoxication or by taking stable pills prescribed by a doctor.