What are diabetes symptoms?

The signs and symptoms of diabetes are talked about all the time and if you google it there are hundreds of sites that tell you...BUT... the most common symptom is nearly always missed. Watch this video for Dr Sultan's simple, clear and effective explanation.

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Video Transcript

So most people who look and try to find information about diabetes ask themselves a really straight forward question early on, which is what are the symptoms of diabetes?
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So we are going to look at symptoms and we are going to compare that to blood sugar levels and the first thing you will notice is that as the blood sugar levels rise the symptoms actually increase very slowly but at a certain point they seem to go up really quite dramatically and so for most people that are initially diagnosed in fact they have no symptoms at all. Most people with abnormal sugars but relatively low levels feel fine.
If you then expand that further and the blood sugars go up a little bit then what you find is people then start to talk about fatigue. And that is the most common, real true symptom of diabetes.
And if sugars go further and up higher then not only do we start seeing fatigue but also increasing urination. So they get up two or three times a night three, four, five times a night to pass urine.
And when the blood sugars become elevated and become elevated above say around about 10mmol or 180mg/dl then we start seeing impairment in the way that the immune system functions and infections become more common. And that may be things like skin wounds that don't heal and cuts and grazes that really struggle to heal. Or it could be something like urinary or chest infections. Something that you would necessarily think of as being related to diabetes but it certainly is.
So when the sugars go up even higher that is when we start to see excessive thirst.
So if you are passing a lot of urine you start to feel very thirsty and often people in that situation would do something that is actually quite illogical but makes total sense which is they will consume lots and lots of sugary drinks.
Even though the blood sugars are high because you are losing a lot of sugar in your urine the body has a sort of compulsion to find sugary sweet things.
So not only will people in this situation be looking for sugary drinks they tend to consume lots of things like fruit juice and soft drinks and that causes the blood sugars to go even higher.
And so that is when you see really the main symptoms that you would see described in books and on websites of fatigue, urination, excessive thirst, and blurred vision.
Now blurred vision is quite an interesting thing.
What happens in that situation is that the sugar actually impregnates into the lens of the eye and causes it to swell. And it is effectively changing people's magnification and their ability to see and over the years.
I have seen so many people who have gone to the optometrist who have been told they need glasses, been given brand new glasses and then we discover they have diabetes, change their blood sugars over time the lens shape changes and then it turns out they never needed glasses whatsoever.
So all of those are the symptoms of diabetes and they all occur based on the blood sugar level. And how long does that take to occur? How quickly does someone go from having no symptoms at all to having lots?
Well, it depends on the kind of diabetes you have.
So if you take someone with Type 2 diabetes we know that most people when they are diagnosed have already had Type 2 diabetes for anywhere from 5-10 years prior to diagnosis.
And often what happens is a person will have diabetes but then prior to that they will have borderline diabetes or pre-diabetes and before that they will have abnormal insulin reactions to their glucose. So it is a slow and steady progression that occurs over time.
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Видео What are diabetes symptoms? канала My Health Explained