Diabetes mellitus is rapidly spreading throughout the world, and it does not matter that scientists have not discovered all the reasons why this disease may be. In this situation, a person can only be attentive to her own body.
And let the symptom of another disease be confused with the manifestation of diabetes - if there is a suspicion, you should immediately seek clarification with the doctor (especially since there is also asymptomatic diabetes).
It is usual to classify 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 certain signs of pathology, which you can learn about in the material below.
Causes of diabetes
Despite the apparent abundance of causes of the disease, its main causes are two:
- sugar (specifically) and food (in general);
- psychological preparation for harm 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 appearances: even the tomato sauce recipe is not complete without the addition of sugar, not to mention unthinkable 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 humans do not consume raw. 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. The obsessive offers to eat have turned it into a constantly chewing creature, 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:
- smoke tobacco;
- drug use;
- excessive drug addiction: sleeping pills, sedatives, painkillers.
The second leading cause of diabetes is stress. And one of the levers of stress is the constant reminder of the threat of diabetes, which follows a person everywhere. Alarmed by such a prospect, the mind creates a subconscious prerequisite for illness.
There is another factor in the spread of diabetes around the world due to advances in medicine. If 100-150 years ago, diabetic patients rarely had offspring, now the conditionality of the disease by heredity 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 contamination of the environment looks environment (another cause of diabetes). like an innocent baby.
Classification of diseases
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 causes of another plan (due to past infections, use of medications or others).
There is a division of the disease into cases with varying degrees of severity:
- light;
- moderate;
- severe.
Depending on the level of carbohydrate metabolism status, diabetes can be:
- compensated;
- undercompensated;
- unbalanced
Classification by 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 pathology);
- diabetic foot (a separate isolated syndrome describing pathology of blood vessels and other structures involving the lower extremities).
The clinical diagnosis, compiled on the basis of the above systematics, gives a brief and broad picture of the patient's condition already at 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 classical 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 in the Middle Ages only suspected an excess of the natural grape sugar in the blood, glucose, but could corroborate the diagnosis in another way, by testing the patient's urine. Because due to a disorder in the renal filtration process, 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 the current 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 bland, but this is a completely different disease, the development of which is caused by completely different reasons.
With non-manifest (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;
- Headaches;
- unjustified muscle weakness;
- dryness in the oral cavity;
- itching involving the skin and mucous membranes (especially often in the intimate area);
- difficult-to-heal skin lesions;
- a noticeable odor of acetone coming from the urine.
Its presence does not allow diagnosing type I or II of the disease; only a study of the pathology by a specialist doctor, plus 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 approach suddenly and powerfully, 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 (abundant and frequent urination);
- polydipsia (insatiable thirst);
- polyphagia ("wolfish appetite" that does not bring saturation);
- noticeable (and increasing) weight loss.
It should be noted that this is not about the temporary residence of a 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 natural biochemical balance in the body, substances with a toxic effect on structures accumulate:
- nervous tissue;
- hearts;
- kidneys;
- liver;
- cups
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 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 onset of a 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 simply cannot reduce its content. As a result of excess glucose, it turns into a toxin that disrupts the normal course of all chemical reactions in the body, not only when it comes 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 cross 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 lead to a coma.
From here follow the sensations experienced by the patient, either having the character of small signs, or manifestations of diabetes:
- polyuria (diabetes) with sweet urine;
- polydipsia (appearance of thirst, which is not eliminated even by drinking frequently and abundantly);
- polyphagia (indomitable gluttony);
- Unmotivated 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 unexplained:
- dizziness;
- nausea;
- noise and ringing in the ears;
- vomiting;
- transient sensory or movement disorders;
- Problems with perception and memory.
Small 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;
- dryness of the cornea (a feeling of dryness, "grit", itching or pain in the eyes);
- blur the contours of objects;
- waves and flies in the eyes;
- periodic appearance of blind spots and loss of full fields of vision;
- unexplained "darkening" in the eyes.
The presence of diabetic vascular disease can cause a primary attraction for doctors of other profiles:
- with trophic disorders of the skin (formation of ulcers on the lower extremities) - to the surgeon;
- with non-healing skin lesions - to a dermatologist;
- with bleeding, non-healing wounds in the mouth or appearance of sores, to the dentist.
The reason to seek medical help immediately should be any case of sudden loss of consciousness, the appearance of a condition characterized as "loss of tongue", "numb arm, leg", dizziness, accompanied by nausea and vomiting, even if these symptoms they can be explained by alcohol or drug intoxication or by taking stable tablets prescribed by a doctor.