Some Silent Signs You Might Have Diabetes
New studies show a shocking 25 percent of people with type 2 diabetes don't even know it. You're taking more bathroom breaks; You've lost a little weight; You feel shaky and hungry; You're tired all the time; You're moody and grumpy, Your vision seems blurry; Your cuts and scrapes heal more slowly; Your feet tingle; You're more prone to urinary tract and yeast infections. If you experience some of these subtle signs and symptoms, talk to your doctor about getting tested. Diabetes has plenty of early signs, but they're subtle enough that you might not notice."It's not like you wake up one day and all of a sudden you're thirsty, hungry, and going to the bathroom all the time," says Melissa Joy Dobbins, RD, a certified diabetes educator in Illinois and a spokesperson for the American Association of Diabetes Educators. "It picks up gradually." Indeed, "most people are unaware that they have diabetes in its early or even middle phases," says Aaron Cypess, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and staff physician at Joslin Diabetes Center. Just because you're not keyed in, it doesn't mean you're immune from problems associated with diabetes. The longer you go without controlling diabetes, the greater your risk for heart disease, kidney disease, amputation, blindness, and other serious complications. "We recommend that people with risk factors for diabetes, such as a family history or being overweight, get evaluated on a regular basis," Dr. Cypess says. If you've been feeling off, talk to your doctor about getting a simple blood test that can diagnose the disease. And pay attention to these subtle diabetes signs and symptoms. When you have diabetes, your body becomes less efficient at breaking food down into sugar, so you have more sugar sitting in your bloodstream, says Dobbins. "Your body gets rid of it by flushing it out in the urine. That's why you're going to the bathroom a lot." Most patients aren't necessarily aware of how often they use the bathroom, says Dr. Cypess. "When we ask about it, we often hear, 'Oh yeah, I guess I’m going more often than I used to,'" he says. But one red flag is whether the need to urinate keeps you up at night. Once or twice might be normal, but if it's affecting your ability to sleep, that could be a symptom to pay attention to. It's not uncommon for patients to suddenly feel unsteady and immediately need to reach for carbs, says Marjorie Cypress, a nurse practitioner at an endocrinology clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and 2014 president of health care and education for the American Diabetes Association. "When you have high blood sugar, your body has a problem regulating its glucose," she explains. "If you've eaten something high in carbohydrates, your body shoots out a little too much insulin, and your glucose drops quickly. This makes you feel shaky, and you tend to crave carbs or sugar. This can lead to a vicious cycle."Of course you're exhausted every now and then. But ongoing fatigue is an important symptom to pay attention to; it might mean the food you're eating for energy isn't being broken down and used by cells as it's supposed to. "You're not getting the fuel your body needs," says Dobbins. "You're going to be tired and feel sluggish." But in many cases of type 2 diabetes, your sugar levels can be elevated for a while, so these symptoms could come on slowly.
By Lauren Gelman
http://www.rd.com/health/conditions/signs-diabetes/ acesso no dia 17 de dezembro de 2015 e editado.
As expressões “moody e grumpy” destacadas em negrito no texto significam, respectivamente:
