How Does Diabetes Affect The Body?
Knowing how diabetes affects your body can help you look after your body and prevent diabetic complications from developing.
Many of the effects of diabetes stem from the same guilty parties; namely high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and a lack of blood glucose control.
Signs of diabetes
When undiagnosed or uncontrolled, the effects of diabetes on the body can be noticed by the classic symptoms of diabetes, namely:
Increased thirst
Frequent need to urinate
Fatigue
Blurred vision and Tingling or pain in the hands, feet and/or legs
Long term effects of diabetes on the body
In addition to the symptoms, diabetes can cause long term damage to our body. Complications are not a certainty and can be kept at bay and prevented by maintaining a strong level of control on your diabetes, your blood pressure and cholesterol.
These can all be helped by keeping to a healthy diet, avoiding cigarettes and alcohol, and incorporating regular activity into your daily regime in order to keep blood sugar levels within recommended blood glucose level guidelines.
The effect of diabetes on the heart
Diabetes and coronary heart disease are closely related.
Diabetes contributes to high blood pressure and is linked with high cholesterol which significantly increases the risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular disease.
Diabetes and strokes
Similar to how diabetes affects the heart, high blood pressure and cholesterol raises the risk of strokes.
How diabetes affects the eyes
A relatively common complication of diabetes is diabetic retinopathy.
As with all complications, this condition is brought on by a number of years of poorly controlled or uncontrolled diabetes. The best way to do this is to attend a retinopathy screening appointment, provided free on the NHS, once each year.
Effect of diabetes on the kidneys
The kidneys are another organ that is at particular risk of damage as a result of diabetes and the risk is again increased by poorly controlled diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol.
Diabetic nephropathy is the term for kidney disease as a result of diabetes.
Damage to the kidneys takes place over a period of years and can picked up by nephropathy screening before it gets too serious. If diabetes has caused nerve damage, this can lead to nausea, constipation or diarrhoea.
An alternative cause of disturbed digestion can be the result of diabetes medication.
Some type 2 diabetes medications for instance are prone to causing digestive issues, although these tend to settle down after the body gets used to them.
How diabetes affects the skin
Diabetes affect on the skin is usually a result of its affect on the nerves and circulation which can lead to dry skin, slow healing of cuts, burns and wounds, fungal and bacterial infections and loss of feeling in the foot.
People with diabetes are recommended to have their feet checked at least once a year.
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