complications of diabetes

What are the Complications?
How does diabetes affect the body? If the blood sugar (glucose) is not controlled, it can lead to a number of complications:

• Eye problems
• Heart disease
• Stroke
• Kidney failure
• Nerve damage
• Loss of limbs
• Tooth and gum problems

Diabetes injures the blood vessels that serve a number of key body organs. This can go on to damage your vision, your heart, your kidneys. It can delay or prevent tissues from healing. If wounds do not heal, it can lead to amputation.
Blood vessel injury can lead to:

• Heart attacks and heart failure
• Stroke
• Loss of vision, even blindness
• Poor kidney function, even kidney failure
• Poor wound healing, including minor injuries
• Poor circulation
• Amputation, usually of toes, feet or lower legs, can result from poor circulation and poor wound healing

Poor circulation

• Poor circulation prevents nutrients and oxygen from reaching the cells to help heal wounds and infections.
• Cells without oxygen or nutrients die.
• The affected area becomes numb or tingly or sometimes painful.
• Sometimes the poor, slow circulation causes blockage in a blood vessel. Blood that cannot flow through an artery can become a clot which can cause a heart attack, stroke or other blockage.

Poor circulation and infections

• A cut or wound will not heal well or quickly if there is high blood sugar The germs feed off the sugar and multiply.
• The damaged blood vessels are not able to transport enough infection-fighting cells, natural antibodies, antibiotic medicine or nutrition to the wound to heal well.

Complications: Heart disease
Heart disease is one of the most common complications of diabetes. Diabetes causes increased risk of:

• chest pain (angina)
• coronary artery disease (blockages of arteries in the heart)
• heart attack
• congestive heart failure

Factors which increase the risk of heart disease in diabetics:

• high blood sugar
• igh blood pressure
• high cholesterol

Diabetes and high blood pressure

• One of the common illnesses that develops when you have diabetes is high blood pressure.
• The high pressure with each beat of the heart damages the heart and blood vessels.
• Eventually it can weaken the heart muscle, causing congestive heart failure.
• If the pressure becomes really high, it can also cause a stroke.

Diabetes and cholesterol

Cholesterol damages arteries, too.
• It plugs them up with fatty deposits.
• This narrows the openings and slows down blood flow.
• This increases the likelihood of heart attacks, strokes and poor circulation to the legs.
• Smoking makes all of this worse by further narrowing the arteries.

Complications: Kidney

• The kidney acts as a filter for bloodpassing small waste into the urine and keeping large nutrients (protein and sugar) for bodys use.
• When blood sugar is not controlled, the high sugar in the blood damages the kidneys, leaving holes in the tiny filters that make up the kidney.
• When filters are damaged, it lets protein and sugar cells into the urine.
  • The presence of protein in the urine can mean there is kidney damage.

Kidney failure

• End stage renal disease (ESRD) is the medical term for kidney failure (when the kidneys can no longer function).
• Kidney dialysis is then used to do the work formerly done by the kidneys.
• Many persons with ESRD must use dialysis about three times a week to clean their blood.

Renal (kidney) dialysis

• A special machine is used to remove waste from the bloodlike a kidney does.
• Smaller machines might also be used at home by some patients who are trained and can do their own dialysis.
• A family member might also be trained to do this dialysis at home.

Complications: Vision

• Retinopathy (blurred vision/blindness) occurs when the tiny blood vessels that nourish.
• Weakened blood vessels can break and bleed, causing blindness.
• Laser treatments are often used to repair weakened or broken blood vessels.
• Timely eye exams and laser treatments can prevent blindness.

Complications: Nerve damage

• Neuropathy (damage to the nerves) is a common complication of diabetes, especially when the blood sugar is not controlled.
• Blood vessels that feed the cells are tiny and have very narrow passages.
• When blood vessels become damaged from the high sugar levels, oxygen and nutrients cannot be delivered to the cells, damaging the nerve cells.

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Complications: Dental

• The poor circulation can also affect the blood vessels that supply oxygen and nutrients to the gums and bone which hold the teeth in place.
• Gums and jawbone that are unable to get the nutrients and oxygen are more likely to develop infection or become loose.
• Loose gums can mean lost teeth.
• Gum infections make blood sugar control very difficult.

Complications: Amputation

• Most amputations occur when wounds are not healing and become life threatening.
• It becomes life threatening because the infection can spread and affect the body's total blood stream and important organs like the heart, the brain, etc.
• When the wound becomes serious, tissues become damaged and infection can't be controlled, it becomes necessary to remove the affected part to save the life.

Amputations

• Depending on the size and location of the incurable infection or wound, the surgery may mean removing one toe or up to the ankle, it may mean removing the foot, etc.
• Special shoes or a special prosthesis may be used to help with walking.
• A wheel chair may be used if the amputation removes much of the leg and no artificial limb is possible for medical or personal reasons.

Complications: Sexual dysfunction

• Because nerves and blood vessels are damaged by high blood sugar, diabetes can lessen sexual desire.
• Both men and women can be affected
• Diabetes can also lead to impotence (also called erectile dysfunction or ED). This is when the man is unable to have an erection (the penis can't get hard enough to allow intercourse to occur). Medicine may be helpful for this.
• Many native people do not talk about this, but they should feel okay about talking to their doctors about this concern.

Complications and Smoking

• Smoking is a known cause of heart disease and stroke..
• Smoking (nicotine) causes the small blood vessels everywhere in the body to constrict (get narrow), which decreases oxygen to tissues.
• Smoking also makes the blood sludgy, making it more likely to clot and cause heart attacks and strokes.
• Smoking (even without diabetes) also causes gum disease
• Smoking worsens all the negative effects of diabetes on the body.

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symptoms of diabetes

While talking about symptoms of diabetes, you must keep in mind that there are no clear real symptoms, and not all the individuals present all them.

Diabetes symptoms vary from person to person making observations as difficult as comparing life insurance quotes in a time besot by financial crisis. The best thing you can do is to learn more about these symptoms and weigh how many of them applies to you.


The most common symptoms of diabetes that one can experience are as follow:

• Constant excessive thirst and Unusual increased urination
If you have diabetes,due to high sugar blood level, fluid comes out from cells to blood stream in order to adapt to this new situation. This cause dehydration of body cell, they suffer lack of fluid.
But here interfere your body thirst center which makes you to drink a lot of water or other juices. When you take lots of juices, you may experience frequent urination daily and nights.

• Increase hunger and weight gain as common symptoms of diabetes
When you have diabetes, you lose too much fluid and too much sugar. Your body needs to compensate them by craving sweets or other foods as well.
This experience of increase hunger causes you a fast weight gain. But this is not good for you body, and diabetes and weight gain
is not a 'good-impact' link. It has a negative influence on your diabetes course too.

• Vision changes
If you have diabetes, you may experience sudden vision changes, such as blurred vision. This is caused because, due to diabetes changes in your eye tissues, they tend to pull out from your lenses.
This makes you disable to focus, but if you take appropriate treatment, this can be restored. But, in serious cases of diabetes, these vision disorders can be prolonged, and maybe it leads you to blindness.

• Not healing skin infections
During diabetes, your body process of healing is hindered due to high sugar blood level. Mostly, you can experience recurrent skin infection.
Or, if you are a woman, you may have problems due to no properly recovery from vaginal and bladder yeast infections.
So, you must pay attention to all these kinds of recurrent infections, because they are a signal for you : you might have diabetes.
On the other hand you should know about diabetes skin care
to avoid future severe skin injuries.

• Tingling or Numbness
While you experience diabetes, your high sugar blood level damages your nerves and your nerves blood vessels too. This leads to some specific symptoms such as tingling or numbness in your hands or feet.
Maybe, you can also, experience some burning sensation in hands, arms, legs or feet.

• Gums disorders
Another symptom you can experience during diabetes, are several gums disorders. During diabetes your gums may be tender, swollen or red. Your teeth may be loose due to gums pulling away from your teeth.
There might be present, also, gum infections and several gum diseases. You may try an alternative to protect your gums, and at the same time a no-carbohydrates sweetener at all.

• Some other common symptoms of diabetes
Diabetic people may suffer from feeling very tired, weak, fatigue most of the time. Also, they may experience loss of appetite, dry skin, stomach pains, nausea, vomiting, or even hair loss.
If you want to know more about what can you do for diabetes and hair loss, click here.

These are some common symptoms for diabetes that you may experience. You must keep in mind, that you may not experience all the symptoms. They vary from one individual to another.
Also, you must remember that you may have diabetes symptoms, but you are not aware of them, because they can be unnoticed.
What do you have to do if you notice to have them?
You can make a simple sugar blood test yourself, and immediately consult your doctor for further follow up.

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