Symptoms of diabetes

Symptoms of diabetes include excessive thirst, excessive urine volume, frequency of urination and getting up at night to pass urine. These are some symptoms of diabetes and only occur when your blood sugar is over 10 mmols/L. If you have symptoms of diabetes and your doctor measures the fasting blood glucose or blood glucose at anytime of the day, even after eating, and it is greater than 11.1 mmols/L, you can be diagnose with diabetes with that one test.

The symptoms of diabetes vary in different individuals. Very mild diabetes with the blood sugar in the range of 7-10 mmols/L usually does not have any symptoms. Sometimes there is fatigue and/or a lack of alertness but you would not have many symptoms. It is only when the blood sugar gets up over 10 mmols/L, which is the kidney threshold, that the blood sugar is so high that it spills over the dam that the kidney represents and you start to put sugar in your urine.

When you put sugar in your urine it demands that water goes out with that sugar and you end up with excessive urine flow or excessive urination. The more you urinate those fluids then the more thirsty you become. So the sequences are as follows: 1.the blood sugar gets over 10, 2. you start to urinate more fluid volume to get the sugar out of the body and 3. the body then becomes dehydrated or dry and you become thirsty. So now you produce the classical symptoms of diabetes, which are excessive thirst and excessive urination. If your blood sugar is very high, you also can have blurred vision. This is not the same as saying you have eye disease and that is a very important point. You can have that blurriness of vision just because of dehydration and the fact that you have urinated excessively. This blurred vision is easily treated by getting your blood sugars down into a healthier range and is not a permanent problem.

If you have diabetes for years and you did not recognize those symptoms, then you can have many more symptoms. For example you can have impaired thinking, insomnia and sleepiness. You can even have some of the complications of diabetes including nerve damage in the feet, kidney damage, true eye damage so your vision is impaired and other forms of illness that are even more complicated such as heart disease. However, you very rarely nowadays have people who have those symptoms and have not been diagnosed because you had to have the disease at least five or six years with high sugars before any of these complications develop. To summarize, diabetes is a blood sugar greater than 7 mmols/L in the fasting state or a blood sugar greater than 11.1 mmols/L two hours after eating. That is how we define diabetes with or without the symptoms.

Signs and symptoms of diabetes include the following:

• Unusual thirst

• Frequent urination

•  Weight change (gain or loss)

• Extreme fatigue or lack of energy

• Blurred vision

• Frequent or recurring infections

• Cuts and bruises that are slow to heal

• Tingling or numbness in the hands or feet

• Trouble getting or maintaining an erection
  
  It is important to recognize, however, that many people who have type 2 diabetes may display no symptoms.