Do you know the symptoms of diabetes mellitus?

Common symptoms

The symptoms of diabetes mellitus is due to hyperglycemia. The sustained rise in blood sugar produces the three cardinal symptoms:

• Polyuria (increased amount of urine),
• Polydipsia (increased thirst and, therefore, the intake of large amounts of water or liquids)
• Polyphagia (urge to eat without stopping).

As a consequence, in the first phase there is weight loss, nausea and vomiting appear and the patient has generalized fatigue.

Other complications

If the increase in blood sugar continues, the acute complications:

Ketoacidosis

It appears quite quickly in the form of:

• nausea and vomiting
• Intense thirst and constant urge to urinate
• Abdominal pain
• Rapid and shallow breathing, until reaching coma.

Diabetic ketoacidosis requires complete or almost complete insulin deficiency and a excess hormones with the opposite effect to insulin, mainly glucagon, which is another hormone also manufactured by the pancreas. These two conditions usually occur in the individual with not yet known diabetes to which an acute disease is added (an infection, a myocardial infarction, etc.) and in the individual with known diabetes but to whom insulin is not administered by mistake or because the continuous insulin delivery device fails. Therefore, it may be the disorder leading to the diagnosis of diabetes.

Ketosis without acidosis

It occurs in individuals (usually elderly) with type 2 diabetes in whom there is not yet a complete failure of insulin production but hyperglycemia conditions water losses through the urine that are not compensated with the intake of fluids or food:

• Significant dehydration
• Mental confusion, drowsiness and seizures,
• There is no nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, or rapid, shallow breathing.

Often this state is precipitated by a serious concurrent disease, such as myocardial infarction, stroke, or infection.

Long-term symptoms

The sustained elevation of blood sugar, together with the alterations associated with diabetes, low physical activity and smoking, produce a wide range of symptoms and signs in the body, although these appear in the long term (years).

These chronic complications begin to appear after 15-20 years of disease evolution (not after diagnosis). I know injure arteries, nerves, retina, kidney, and other internal structures, causing the following clinical manifestations:

• Kidney damage up to the complete loss of kidney function.
• Vision impairment leading to blindness.
• Nerve damage with numbness and tingling in the feet, pain or burning pain in the feet, and weakness in the extremities.
• Obstruction of blood circulation in the heart (causing angina pectoris and heart attack), in the legs (with intermittent claudication, foot ulcers and amputations) or in the brain (with embolisms).
• Delayed emptying of the stomach (with nausea and vomiting, early satiety and distention of the abdomen) and loss of mobility of the intestine (with constipation or diarrhea and abdominal pain).
• Difficulty urinating (with retention of urine and ease of repeated urinary infections).
• Drop in blood pressure when getting up from bed.
• Inability to adequately detect hypoglycemia (inadvertent hypoglycemia), thus putting the patient at risk of severe hypoglycemia.
• erectile dysfunction in the male and female sexual dysfunction (decreased sexual desire, pain with sexual intercourse).
• Dry skin and cracking, which increases the risk of foot ulcers; slow healing of wounds and skin ulcers.
• Pneumonia and urinary and skin infections.