Early Symptoms of Diabetes

When glucose begins to accumulate in our blood stream a series of symptoms of diabetes will be manifested. While these symptoms of diabetes may not conclusively proof diabetes, the presence of any of the symptoms of diabetes should logically lead you to do a blood glucose test. The instant we hear that someone in our family has diabetes we begin to worry and with sound reasons too after all, diabetes is very hereditary. This blog gives you a clear bird’s eye view of the symptoms of diabetes. Essentially there are three types of diabetes – (1) Pre-diabetic stage (2) Diabetes Type 2 and Diabetes Type 1 You are Pre-diabetic if your blood sugar is a bit higher than normal and Blood glucose tests reveal that it happens on several occasions. Diabetes Type 2 is the next stage i.e. your blood glucose is habitually higher than normal either due to impaired insulin production or inability of your blood cells to utilize insulin. Diabetes Type 1 is when your body does not produce insulin leading to accumulation of glucose in your blood. So is blood sugar testing the only means to find out if we are diabetic or not? Fortunately no, so let’s take a look at the symptoms of diabetes beginning with Pre-diabetic and diabetes type 2. I have combined these two because the symptoms of diabetes for both stages are the same. The classification of Pre or Type 2 depends on the severity and state of your Pancreas. Symptoms of Pre-diabetic and Diabetes Type 2: Symptom of diabetes 1: Fatigue Have you been feeling increasingly fatigued lately? Here’s what happens; normally your body metabolizes glucose and converts it to energy which in turn powers up your activity. If you body cannot metabolize glucose then fat is metabolized into energy. This alternate method however is not efficient and the body goes in negative calorie effect, which results in fatigue. Symptom of diabetes 2: Thirst As the concentration of blood sugar increases, the brain triggers a thirst signal in an effort to get you to drink water and dilute the excess sugar in the blood. If you were drinking an average three glasses of water a day and now instead you have been drinking 5 or more glasses than you should seriously consider a blood glucose test. Symptom of diabetes 3: Excess urination Tied in with symptom 2 of diabetes is increase in the number of times you need to urinate. Excess intake of water results in excess urination. At this stage the urine essentially is secreting the excess sugar. It tends to be dark yellow. Symptom of diabetes 4: Excessive hunger In an all out effort to control the sugar level, your Pancreases will increase the production of insulin. Insulin however, apart from breaking down glucose in the blood also triggers sensation of hunger. Check out also for Type 2 diabetes information blog and Type 2 diabetes and hypertension