Diabetes Symptoms

Are you suffering from diabetes? What are the signs of diabetes?

People who are prone to diabetes—especially those who have the disease in their family's history (from mother's side in particular)—should consider that there is a great possibility that they or their kids might inherit the illness. So, the best way to go about it is become very informed about the condition. It's important to know what diabetes is, what are its symptoms, and how to diagnose it properly.

What You Should Know About Diabetes

The more your understand about this disease, the easier will be to prevent it or to deal with it. You can avoid many potential health traps that can lead to diabetes. The following are the things that people who are prone to diabetes should know and keep in mind:

1. Types of Diabetes

Experts say that the severity of diabetes can be determined through its types.

Type 1 diabetes

There is "type 1 diabetes" also known as "juvenile diabetes" or "insulin-dependent diabetes". This is an auto-immune type targeting the body's immune system and the least common type.

Type 2 diabetes

The "type 2 diabetes" also known as "non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus" or "adult-onset diabetes". This type affects the amount of insulin produced in the person's body. It is the most prevalent type of diabetes today.

Gestational diabetes

The third type is "gestational diabetes". It is common among women who are conceiving or pregnant.

Each of the two main types of diabetes, type 1 and type 2, have somewhat different symptoms

2. Diabetes Symptoms

To know if you are suffering from diabetes or not, knowing the symptoms for each type would help you a lot.

 Diabetes 1 symptoms

Those who suffering from type 1 diabetes would experience diabetes exceptional thirstiness, dryness of mouth despite taking in lots of fluid, the urgent need to urinate more often, drastic loss of weight even is they are eating fairly well, exhaustion or feeling of being weak or tired despite less workload, and blurring of vision in most occasions.

 Diabetes 2 symptoms

For type 2 diabetes, sufferers experience often blurring of vision, wounds, sores, or cuts that takes a long time to heal, itchiness of skin in many parts of the body, frequent development of yeast infections, increased or onset thirst, drying of mouth, frequent urination, and mild to extreme leg pains. One can also experience loss of feeling in one's skin on arms when resting longer, or napping. Type 2 can cause weight gain in the beggining, to be followed by sudden weight loss when the disease has fully blown.

 Gestational diabetes symptoms

Gestational diabetes symptoms are also alike with other types; it's just that they are short termed because the disease ends once the woman gives birth. However, people who have this type of diabetes should be more careful because it can lead to type 2 if not monitored and treated immediately. This particularly applies if one has a family history of the disease from mother's side.

3. Diagnosis Tests

For a person to finally know whether he or she suffers from diabetes, tests for diagnosis are a must. Although the symptoms can give you a hint whether you are suffering from the illness or not, relying on these are not enough. Experts say that only way to confirm if one has diabetes or not is to get a test.

Now, there are so many types of diabetes diagnosis tests that one can get including:

Fasting plasma glucose test

Considered as the most preferred test for people with diabetes. Fasting plasma glucose test requires a person to go fasting at least eight hours or ideally the night before the test to ensure that the blood sample that will be drawn and examined for glucose levels is accurate.

Random blood glucose test

Unlike the Fasting Plasma Glucose test, random blood glucose test doesn’t require fasting but the blood samples should be drawn out immediately after the person has eaten or has drunk something.

Oral glucose tolerance test

This test requires the person being tested to fast not less than 8 hours prior to it. Oral glucose tolerance test prohibits him or her to smoke cigar and drink coffee before drawing the blood sample for the testing.

Glucose challenge test

This test is for women who are prone to gestational diabetes, which happens when they're pregnant.

Impared fasting glucose test

This test is considered as a new diagnostic category for people with diabetes. Impared fasting glucose test checks what blood sugar levels are and based on those can determine the probability of the person to have diabetes.

If you experience any of the early diabetes symptoms, do the smart thing and get a diagnosis test done by your doctor. Prevention is always better than cure, especially when it comes to such a silent killer as it is diabetes.

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