Diabetes mellitus is rapidly spreading around the world and it doesn't matter that scientists haven't discovered 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 any doubt, you should immediately seek clarification from a doctor (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, the initial stages of the disease are often asymptomatic or 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 (in particular) and food (in general);
- psychological readiness for damage to the organism (state of stress).
Despite the search for new ways to treat diabetes, sucrose continues to conquer the world in parallel. Sugar is given the most exotic and seductive look - not even a recipe for tomato ketchup is complete without the addition of sugar, not to mention unimaginable wedding cakes and seemingly innocent children's breakfasts.
Reference. Most natural fruits and vegetables do not contain sucrose - they are produced from the juice of plants that people do not consume raw. Therefore, it can be attributed to artificially obtained chemical compounds.
Food in general has also become a threat to health. Man has never eaten so much and so often. Obsessive offers to eat 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 glandular tissue necrosis and as a way to cause organ ischemia.
This also applies to:
- smoking tobacco;
- drug use;
- excessive drug addiction: sleeping pills, sedatives, painkillers.
Another major cause of diabetes is stress. And one of the levers of stress is a constant reminder of the threat of diabetes, which follows a person everywhere. Disturbed by such a prospect, the mind creates a subconscious precondition for illness.
Another factor in the spread of diabetes around the world exists because of medical advances. If 100-150 years ago, diabetics rarely had offspring, now the conditioning 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 haven for diabetes thanks to physical inactivity with its inevitable companions: obesity, constipation, osteoporosis, microthrombi and metabolic disorders in all body systems, against which total environmental pollution appears (another reason for 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 independent of insulin);
- gestational (due to pregnancy);
- caused by reasons of another plan (due to past infections, use of drugs or in some other way).
There is a division of the disease into cases of varying degrees of severity:
- light;
- moderate;
- serious.
According to the level of carbohydrate metabolism, diabetes can be:
- compensated;
- undercompensated;
- decompensated.
Classification according to the presence of complications includes the consequences of diabetes in the form of:
- micro- or macroangiopathies (vascular lesions);
- neuropathy (damage to nerve tissue and its structures);
- retinopathy (damage to the organs of vision);
- nephropathy (kidney pathology);
- diabetic foot (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-mentioned systematics, already in the first reading gives a short and comprehensive picture of the patient's condition. 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 classic literal translation of the name of the disease from Latin (diabetes meda), diabetes mellitus has two main characteristics:
- sweet taste of urine;
- frequent and copious urination.
Medieval doctors only suspected an excess of natural grape sugar in the blood - glucose, but they could confirm the diagnosis in another way - by tasting the patient's urine. Because due to disturbances in the renal filtration process, glucose enters the urine in diabetes (normally it should not be there). Later, the assumptions of the fathers of medicine were brilliantly confirmed - the disease also includes hyperglycemia (excessive amount of glucose in the blood).
It is possible to be guided by these canons even today, remembering, however, that it is the presence of both signs that testify in favor of diabetes: sweet and abundant urine. It can also be insipidus for diabetes, but this is a completely different disease, the development of which is caused by completely different reasons.
In case of unmanifested (practically asymptomatic) or delayed diabetes disease, the first signs may be its secondary symptoms (uncharacteristic for this pathology) in the form of:
- visual disturbances;
- headaches;
- unjustified muscle weakness;
- dryness in the oral cavity;
- itching of 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 disease - only the study of pathology by a specialist doctor, plus the study of blood composition in combination with other tests, can distinguish them.
Specific characteristics
They are more characteristic of type I, they approach suddenly and strongly, 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).
This includes:
- polyuria (abundant and frequent urination);
- polydipsia (insatiable thirst);
- polyphagia ("wolf's appetite" that does not bring satiety);
- noticeable (and increasing) weight loss.
It should be noted that this is not a temporary stay of some difficult period of life, after which everything returns to normal, but a stable diseased state of the body for weeks and months.
In addition to glucose, the excess of which becomes not a nutrient, but a compound that disrupts the established metabolism and disrupts the natural biochemical balance in the body, substances with a toxic effect on structures accumulate in it:
- nervous tissue;
- hearts;
- kidneys;
- liver;
- vessels.
The most famous of them is acetone, well known to the brain for the state of intoxication that occurs after drinking alcoholic beverages. The accumulation of acetone and other incompletely oxidized metabolic products leads to the failure of all body systems, primarily nervous and vascular, which provide transport and communication in the body.
In a critical case (with a sudden increase or decrease in blood glucose), diabetes can lead to coma, when circulatory disorders in the brain can lead to the death of the patient.
In which 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 the level of glucose in the blood. In the type II variant, insulin is sufficient, but due to the characteristics of the organism, its ability to regulate blood sugar is limited - insulin is simply unable to reduce its content. As a result of excess glucose, it becomes a toxin that disrupts the normal flow of all chemical reactions in the body, not only in connection with carbohydrate metabolism.
The degree of tissue metabolism disorders and the body's ability to compensate for these disorders determines the severity of diabetes.
With a mild course, the glucose level does not exceed 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 (excess of acetone and similar substances in the blood), which is full of vascular disorders.
In severe cases, the glucose level exceeds 14 units, its fluctuations during the day are significant - there are serious problems with tissue blood supply, while interruptions in brain nutrition can cause coma.
The following are the sensations experienced by the patient, whether they have the character of small signs or manifestations typical of diabetes:
- polyuria (diabetes) with sweet urine;
- polydipsia (appearance of thirst, which is not removed even by frequent and abundant drinking);
- polyphagia (uncontrollable gluttony);
- unmotivated 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 you to become the object of close study may also be nervous system disorders caused by diabetes, which were discovered by a neuropathologist, in the form of unexplained:
- dizziness;
- nausea;
- noise and ringing in the ears;
- vomiting;
- transient sensory or movement disturbances;
- problems with perception and memory.
Small signs of diabetic vascular disease, which are manifested by eye symptoms, can also be deviations in the function of the organ of vision in the form of:
- reducing its severity;
- drying of the cornea (feeling of dryness, "sand", itching or pain in the eyes);
- blurring of the outlines of objects;
- ripples and flies in the eyes;
- periodic appearance of blind spots and loss of entire fields of vision;
- unexplained "darkening" in the eyes.
The presence of diabetic vascular disease may cause a primary attraction to doctors of other profiles:
- with trophic disorders of the skin (formation of ulcers on the lower extremities) - to the surgeon;
- with unhealed skin lesions - to a dermatologist;
- in case of bleeding, non-healing wounds in the mouth or appearance of sores - at the dentist.
The reason for urgent medical help should be any case of sudden loss of consciousness, the appearance of a condition characterized by "lost tongue", "numb arm, leg", dizziness, accompanied by nausea and vomiting, even if these symptoms can be explained by alcohol poisoningor by drugs or by taking stable tablets prescribed by a doctor.