No symptoms diabetes but coming late with cataract complication

A newly diagnosed diabetic typically presents with characteristic symptoms such as excessive thirst, frequent urination, unexpected weight loss or gain, tiredness, hunger, giddiness and blurred vision. These symptoms are present in both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetics. Type 2 diabetics (also commonly called diabetes two) may also present with an increased frequency of infections especially fungal infections, and poor-healing cuts.

However there is another group of diabetics who have no diabetic symptoms (asymptomatic) . These people with no symtoms diabetes may be diagnosed only when they present with complications of untreated diabetes such as visual problems, heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure. It is thus essential for us to identify those who are asymptomatic or are predisposed to diabetes. A major risk factor is heredity. Persons who have close relatives with the disease have a higher risk of developing it, and the more relatives or the closer the relatives are, the higher the risk. For example, if the mother or father or siblings are diabetic, the chances are higher, and increase if both parents are, or more siblings are.

Other predisposing causes of diabetes are overweight, exposure to continued intake of alcohol, race (native Americans, Africans and Asians being more susceptible), a sedentary lifestyle, and diabetes in pregnancy.

Testing For Diabetes

It is far better to have the early symptoms of diabities when one is suffering from the disease than not to have any diabetic symptoms at all.  This is because if one does not have symptoms of diabetic disease, one does not feel unwell, there is no visit to the doctor to confirm or diagnose the disease, and one is at great risk of complications occurring due to untreated diabetes.

Symptoms that one should watch out for in early diabities:  sudden weight loss or gain, thirst, increased urination (you wake up several times nightly to pee), increased appetite, tiredness, increased frequency of fungus infections in the body, a reduction of healing time for wounds.

In late diabities, the symptoms will be those of complications – usually these are not reversible.  Thus one may present with poor vision, blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes.

Diagnosis is simple enough.  Go to your doctor after a 12 hour fast.  Get a fasting sugar blood level done on the spot in the clinic.  If the level is more than 5.5mmol per litre, you are diabetic.  Whether you have symptoms or not is immaterial.  Urine tests to diagnose diabetes are unreliable.

A lot can be said for routine testing for diabetes for the general public.  This will detect a great deal of previously undiagnosed diabetics, and early treatment of this serious disease helps a great deal in preventing, or at the very least delaying, the onset of diabetic complications.