Diabetes mellitus is rapidly spreading around the world, and it does not care that scientists have not found 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 mistaken for 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 severe clinical picture. In this case, often the initial stages of the disease are asymptomatic or are characterized by polymorphism of manifestations. However, there are certain 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 methods of treating diabetes, sucrose continues to take over the world in parallel. Sugar is given the most exotic and seductive appearances - even the recipe for tomato ketchup is not complete without the addition of sugar, not to mention unthinkable wedding cakes and seemingly innocent children's breakfasts.
Reference. Most natural fruits and 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 threat to health. 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 rhythm of life, becomes constant and threatening.
Alcoholic formulations serve both as a direct cause of necrosis of glandular tissue and as a way to induce organ ischemia.
This also applies to:
- tobacco smoking;
- drug use;
- excessive addiction to drugs: sleeping pills, sedatives, painkillers.
The second main cause of diabetes is stress. And one of the levers of stress is the constant reminder of the threat of diabetes, pursuing a person everywhere. Alarmed by such a prospect, the mind creates a subconscious prerequisite for illness.
Another factor in the spread of diabetes around the world exists due to the 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% 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 (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 for reasons of another plan (due to past infections, the use of medicines or otherwise).
There is a division of the disease into cases with varying degrees of severity:
- light;
- moderate;
- severe.
According to the level of the state of carbohydrate metabolism, diabetes can be:
- compensated;
- subcompensated;
- decompensated.
Classification by the presence of complications includes diabetic consequences in the form of:
- micro- or macroangiopathies (vascular lesions);
- neuropathies (damage to the nervous tissue and its structures);
- retinopathy (damage to the organs of vision);
- nephropathy (renal pathology);
- diabetic foot (a separately isolated syndrome describing the pathology of blood vessels and other structures with the involvement of the lower extremities).
The clinical diagnosis, compiled on the basis of the above systematics, gives a brief and capacious picture of the patient's condition already at its 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 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 of the Middle Ages only suspected an excess of natural grape sugar in the blood - glucose, but they could substantiate the diagnosis in another way - by tasting the patient's urine. For due to a disorder in the process of renal filtration, 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 present era, remembering, however, that it is precisely the presence of both signs that testifies in favor of sugar disease: sweet and plentiful urine. For diabetes can also be insipidus, but this is a completely different disease, the development of which is caused by completely different reasons.
With unmanifested (practically asymptomatic) or sluggish diabetes disease, the first signs may be its secondary symptoms (uncharacteristic 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);
- hard-to-heal skin lesions;
- a noticeable smell of acetone coming from the urine.
Their 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 blood composition in combination with other tests, can distinguish between them.
Specific features
They are more characteristic of type I, they approach suddenly and powerfully, therefore 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 (unquenchable 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 any difficult period of life, after which everything returns to normal, but about the stable ill-being 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 disrupts the natural biochemical balance in the body, substances with a toxic effect on the structures accumulate in it:
- nervous tissue;
- hearts;
- kidneys;
- liver;
- vessels.
The best known of these is acetone, well known to the brain for the state of poisoning that comes after drinking an alcoholic beverage. The accumulation of acetone and other incompletely oxidized metabolic products leads to the 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 it is 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 production of insulin, 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 disrupts the normal course of all chemical reactions in the body, not only regarding carbohydrate metabolism.
It is the level of disorders of tissue metabolism 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 a rise 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 interruptions in the nutrition of the brain can provoke a coma.
From here follow the sensations experienced by the patient, either having the character of small signs, or manifestations typical of diabetes:
- polyuria (diabetes) with sweet urine;
- polydipsia (appearance of thirst, not eliminated even by frequent and plentiful drinking);
- polyphagy (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 an object of close 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;
- vomiting;
- transient sensory or movement disorders;
- problems with perception and memory.
Small signs of diabetic vascular disease, manifested by eye symptoms, may also be deviations from the function of the organs of vision in the form of:
- reducing its severity;
- drying of the cornea (feeling like dryness, "sand", itching or pain in the eyes);
- blurring of the outlines of objects;
- ripples and flies in the eyes;
- periodic occurrence of blind spots and loss of entire fields of vision;
- unexplained "darkening" in the eyes.
The presence of diabetic vascular disease can cause a primary appeal to doctors of other profiles:
- with trophic skin disorders (formation of ulcers on the lower extremities) - 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 immediately seeking medical help should be any case of sudden loss of consciousness, the onset of a condition characterized as "lost tongue", "numb arm, leg", dizziness, accompanied by nausea and vomiting, even if these symptoms may beexplained by alcohol or drug intoxication or taking stable pills prescribed by a doctor.