Diabetes is a dangerous disease for the heart, eyesight, kidneys, feet… However, many people are diabetic without knowing it. Intense fatigue can alert you, as can a bad blood test.
Be diabetic it is to have a pancreas that does not produce enough insulin to regulate blood sugar (sugar level) in the blood, or a body that is not able to effectively use the insulin it produces. In France4 million people are affected by this chronic disease of which “93% have a Type 2 diabetes and 6% have type 1 diabetes. tells us Dr Jean-François Thébaut, vice-president of the French Federation of Diabetics. Many others are unaware while diabetes causes complications on the nerves, heart, arteries, eyes, hands, feet, kidneys or even the teeth. On the occasion of the World Diabetes Day November 14Dr Jean-François Thébaut details the signs and symptoms which can alert you to the existence of diabetes.
The blood test will allowassess fasting blood glucose levels and observe it over the long term. The criteria for diabetes are:
- < 1.10 g, no sign of diabetes;
- between 1.10 g and 1.25 g, state of prediabetes
- > 1.26 g, diabetic state if the results observed are observed twice as part of a blood test 2 months apart
Diabetes can also be defined by blood sugar > 2 g, at any time of the day, after a meal for example. “At the pregnant women, this limit is lower at 0.92 g/l on an empty stomach and more than 1.4 g/l after sugar loading“.
The symptoms that should alert you and suggest diabetes are:
- a thirsty important;
- a very frequent urge to urinate and in younger people, enuresis (wetting the bed) can start again;
- a weightlossA weight loss suddenly ;
- and often a severe fatigue.
“In type 1 diabetes, the intensity of symptoms is often sudden. Type 1 diabetes is an immunological diabetes, which affects young people up to 35 years old, sometimes even infants, and which often has a sudden onset and sometimes can cause a coma. While the type 2 diabetes can begin for years in a very insidious manner asymptomatic ande revealed in the context of a complication (stroke, heart attack, eye accident, foot wound, etc.)“, he adds.
“There capillary blood glucose is not recognized as a diabetes screening tool, because we cannot know if the person is really fasting, for example and the values observed are different from the blood test“, he notes.
“A diabetic’s urine is sweet”
Can diabetes be seen physically?
Diabetes cannot be seen physically: it is a insidious disease. “In general, 70% of type 2 diabetics are overweight or proven obese“, illustrates Jean-François Thébaut.
The urine of a diabetic is specific, since in the acute phase of the disease, urine is sweet. In the history of medicine, the first doctors interested in diabetes observed that flies and bees were attracted to the urine of some patients. “It was by tasting the urine that they discovered that it was sweet“, he enjoys revealing to us.
The scores revealed by FINDRISC can identify people at risk of becoming prediabetic. The questions asked by this test make it possible to determine the signs which may alert, namely: high weight and BMI, high blood pressure, smoking…
“And if in addition to these warning signs, the person has people with diabetes in his family, she is at risk of being prediabetic. In this case, it is necessary to do a blood test and evaluate blood sugar, cholesterol, liver function“, he concludes.
Thanks to Jean-François Thébaut, vice-president of the French Federation of Diabetics.