If you have diabetes, it will fall under one of three categories: type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, or gestational diabetes. But since type 2 diabetes is among the most common types of diabetes, you should be aware of the various type 2 diabetes symptoms that you could experience. There several type 2 diabetes symptoms that you need to be aware of so that if you recognize any of them, you can consult with your doctor right away.

Before you learn about the various symptoms of type 2 diabetes, you should have a basic understanding of what causes the disease. Type 2 diabetes occurs when your pancreas is unable to produce enough insulin or the insulin that is produced is not used properly by your body.

If you do develop type 2 diabetes, you can still live a healthy and happy life as long as you get the proper treatment and take care of your body. But it’s always good to be on the lookout for the diabetes symptoms to try and avoid letting the condition go too long without treatment.

Since there are several type 2 diabetes symptoms to watch for, you want to be sure you keep a watchful eye out for any of them that may develop. Type 2 diabetes is a progressive disease which can become more difficult to deal with over time if you don’t get treatment.

Some of the symptoms typically associated with type 2 diabetes include recurring infections of your gums, skin, or bladder. If you start to suffer from these symptoms and have not typically had to deal with them in the past, then you could have type 2 diabetes.

Other common symptoms of type 2 diabetes include bruises or cuts that don’t heal quickly, itchy skin, drowsiness, fatigue, frequent urination and tingling sensations in your hands or feet. If you experience any of these symptoms, be sure to see your doctor as soon as possible.

It can be scary if you are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, but just know that with proper treatment and care from your doctor, you can control the disease and continue to do the things you love to do.

Science does not have an answer as to why the pancreas stops making insulin, or why when it is produced the body is resistant to it. We do know that a mutant gene handed down from long ago ancestors may be responsible. Other possible causes include:

Genetics

Obesity/potbelly

Stress

Physical inactivity

Pancreatic infections

Elevated Serum cholesterol and triglyceride levels

You will find that most risk factors responsible for diabetes, also are factors that exist for heart disease.

Diabetes is due to insulin that is either insufficient or ineffective leading to increased blood glucose levels. This leads to symptoms of polyuria (frequent urination), polydipsia (excessive thirst). Insulin is a hormone secreted by the pancreas. When glucose levels are elevated, insulin changes glucose into energy that the body can use for fuel.

Inefficient insulin and it’s affect on the body:

When insulin is produced but the body fails to use it appropriately, it is said the body is resistant to insulin. A second reaction is when the body does not produce enough insulin to change glucose into energy. In both cases the insulin is inefficient and causes blood glucose levels to rise in the blood.

Is it curable?

Presently no, but there are several exciting and experimental procedures being performed that are showing high success rates. these procedure include;

Pancreatic Transplant: For those with uncontrolled Type 1 DM, but have a functioning kidney. Thankfully, these patients no longer need insulin injections to keep them alive. Additionally, their risks for developing complications associated with diabetes is greatly decreased.

Kidney/Pancreas Transplant: Reserved for patients who have substantial kidney failure, as well as uncontrolled Type 1 diabetes. This surgical procedure allows the patient to be free of dialysis treatments and insulin injections. Patients who avoid rejecting their organs in the first year after surgery, have a greater likelihood of non-rejection for 10 years and more.

Islet Transplants: This procedure is currently in clinical trials and involves replacing the bad Islets Of Langerhans with good islets from a deceased donor. Islets of Langerhans are the insulin producing beta cells of the pancreas. The islets are extracted from the donor pancreas and injected into the liver of the receiver. The cells start manufacturing insulin which works to regulate blood sugar levels.

All of these procedures are currently experimental and are not yet approved by the FDA. In a study of 36 patient who received islet transplant, only five remain free of the need for insulin 2 years after their transplant.

The search for better treatments and a cure for diabetes is on-going, and it is hoped that a cure will present itself in the very near future. But until then, lifestyle changes will help those who are living with diabetes to live a long and productive life in spite of having the disease.

Diabetes in kids is commonly known as juvenile diabetes and is also mainly the ?type 1 diabetes. Its the most common type of diabetes in children with between 90-95% of cases diagnosed being 16 years or under.

Juvenile diabetes is usually caused by the bodies inability to produce insulin from the pancreas. It is an auto immune disease which causes the bodies own defenses to attack the bodies organs or tissues. In the last 25 years has increased three fold. In the US and Europe type 2 diabetes is starting to become more common.

Being overweight usually explains why children are becoming a type 2 diabetic. But it cannot be properly explained why type 1 is increasing. It is suspected that a combination of genetics and environment is what is triggering juvenile diabetes. A majority of children do not have a family history of diabetes.

As in adults, the symptoms of children’s diabetes is the same as in adults. Frequent thirst, weight loss, fatigue, frequent urination is pretty common. Untreated diabetes can cause serious damage. Such as kidney damage, increased likelihood of infections, damage to the eyes. Poor blood circulation to the legs and feet. Damage to the nerves and feet and a significantly increased likelihood of stroke and heart disease.?

Children with diabetes can see an increase in headaches, stomach pains and behaviour problems. If you feel that your child is experiencing any of these symptoms, you should make an appointment with your doctor without delay. And tell the doctor your suspicions.

Contrary to popular belief, the most common symptom of high blood sugar levels is to have no symptoms at all. Most people diagnosed with diabetes will likely not feel a thing in the early phases. However, your organism may trigger some warning signs.

Fatigue. When insulin doesn’t function properly, it cannot break glucose down into components that cell drain energy from. Hence, you will feel tired and the body will not “function” at top parameters. The symptom taken alone is hard to be associated with diabetes, as it could also be the result of a stressful daily life and sleep deprivation.

Increased thirst and frequent urination. When there is a high concentration of glucose in the bloodstream, the kidneys are unable to absorb it. The organism will drain water and try to dilute the sugar. The excess glucose goes in the urine, absorbing large amounts of water. You will always have a full bladder and also feel an unquenchable thirst, as the body is dehydrated.?

Muscle cramps and weight loss. Since glucose is not properly broken down into components the cell can get their energy from, the body will dilute fats and muscle mass. The loss of electrolytes in the muscle tissue can lead to cramps and acute pain. If you are not on a diet or exercising to lose weight and it still happens, or experience frequent muscle issues, you should consider paying a visit to the doctor.

Numb hands, arms or feet. A high level of glucose in the bloodstream will damage the peripheral nervous system, which will send false signals to the brain. This leads to itching, tingling or numbness in hands, arms, legs and/or feet.

Proper diet, an overall healthy lifestyle, exercise and medication should cure diabetes, provided it is diagnosed in its early phases.

One of my friend was lately diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. It came as total shocker to her as she didn’t fell any symptoms like lack of energy, frequent urination and weight loss.

When her physician ordered a test at her yearly check up She came to know that she is diabetic.

I, along with her doctor took this diagnosis very seriously as my friend had previously been diagnosed with high blood pressure, or hypertension, a few years ago.

Is that a problem? People should understand more than two third of people with diabetes do have high blood pressure.

Normally diabetes means that the body could not process sugar properly. There are two types of diabetes. In type 1 the pancreas will not produce enough insulin to maintain blood sugar between meals. People who suffer from this kind of diabetes need to inject insulin in order to maintain blood sugar.

Type 2 diabetes is a condition where the body does actually produce insulin but it is unable to properly process sugar. Of the over 5 million sufferers of diabetes (experts believe this number is actually double and that many people suffer from the disease and don’t realize it), between 90-95% of those suffer type 2 diabetes.

For the people who suffer from type 2 diabetes high sugar affects the tissues and begins to erode. Heart, kidney, eyes and nerves are most affected. From the research it has been confirmed that diabetes is the main cause for kidney failure and 6th reason for heart failure.

Just like high blood pressure, the person who suffers from diabetes feels no symptoms at all. And this affects their major organs and eyes for years.

In fact, those with high blood pressure and diabetes are over 75 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke! In addition to this hypertension also affects heart, kidney’s and eyes.

While medication is needed for many with diabetes, the good news is that you can help delay or prevent the effects of the disease from spreading simply by maintaining a healthy weight and exercising. Additionally, avoid excessive alcohol intake.

Even though medications are available for hypertension it comes with dangerous side effects. Similar to diabetes people who suffer from hypertension can also do certain things like regular exercise, maintaining health, avoid drinking excess alcohol and stop smoking to reduce the effects of hypertension.

If you suffer from high blood pressure and would like an all natural proven treatment, I recommend my High Blood Pressure program. It’s natural breathing and relaxation exercises have helped thousands like you and it may even help for your type 2 diabetes since the two are closely connected.

As the name suggests, gestational diabetes occurs just in pregnant women. This type of diabetes occurs due to some problem in the placenta. As a result, the pancreas does not produce sufficient insulin which causes the blood sugar levels to increase more than normal.

Usually this form of diabetes is diagnosed during 24 to 28 weeks of pregnancy. When the woman is being checked for gestational diabetes, she will be informed not to eat anything for 4 to 8 hours prior to the test. Then her blood sugar level is checked. Thereafter, she will be given a sugar laced drink and once again her blood sugar level will be checked after a period of 2 hours. If the blood sugar level is more than 140mg/dl, the diagnosis will be gestational diabetes.

This form of diabetes tends to manifest in obese women who are more than 25 years of age when they get pregnant. These women are more likely to get this form of diabetes if there is a family history of diabetes, had the same problem with earlier pregnancies or if there is too much amniotic fluid present.

While the woman is pregnant, if she experiences unusual thirst, hunger, weight gain or high blood pressure, then it can be a sign of gestational diabetes. Other signs of the disease are frequent urination or vaginal infections.

Pregnant women who have this disorder are put on a balanced diet without sugar. In addition, they have to exercise 3 to 4 times in a week to get rid of the excess weight they are carrying. Also, their diet will consist more of vegetables and fruits along with poultry and fish. Women have to achieve normal pregnancy weight during the course of their pregnancy in order to control the disease.

If gestational diabetes is not treated or controlled, it can be dangerous for the baby. The baby can get jaundice, respiratory distress syndrome, die after 28 weeks of pregnancy or die after birth as it will suffer from hypoglycemia after birth.

I was making my rounds in the ward as the obstetrician-gynecologist resident physician on duty last September, 2009. I was called in the emergency room because there was thirty two year old in term pregnancy. When I went to her, I noticed that her abdomen was too enlarged to her body frame. She was of medium built even if she said she has big appetite. She said that she was always thirsty. She was always having frequent urination. I told the patient and her relatives that I was suspecting a large a baby. I told them that I was also thinking of diabetes. Big babies usually always come from diabetic mothers.

I asked the nurse to get the capillary blood sugar test. As I suspected, her blood sugar was very high. I told the woman that we would be doing the blood sugar test every hour till she delivered. I was thinking of the doing emergency cesarean section. I referred the woman to the internal medicine for the co-management of diabetes. The internal medicine resident on duty, however, ordered further work-ups such as electrocardiographs, chest x-ray with abdominal shield and fasting blood sugar.

I called the consultant on duty of the obstetrics-gynecology to tell her the condition and management of the patient. She said that she opted to do trial of labor because this was a first pregnancy. There was no indication of operation even if her baby appeared big. So, I induced the labor till her labor did not able to progress after six hours. Now, I have an indication for abdominal delivery which is difficult labor. I asked the permission of the consultant and I delivered the baby via emergency cesarean section.

After the operation, the internal medicine residents ordered to continue capillary blood sugar test every hour. Then, they ordered insulin if the sugar rose to 200mg/dl. When they saw that her sugar was rising up three times, they ordered long-acting and intermediate acting insulin while she could not yet tolerate oral medications. When she could already eat, the oral ant diabetic medication was started. I advised her to slim down and have exercises once able. I discharged her improved after five days. There are so many types of instruments that are available these days for helping people check their level of sugar in blood and keep that in check. So, this important thing can be done much easier than thought.

Juvenile diabetes can be fatal, if not treated properly. The lack of insulin produced by the body will lead to increased concentrations of glucose in the bloodstream. Eventually, the pollution in the blood will start to overwhelm the body’s major organs causing them to shut down. Fortunately, juvenile diabetes symptoms are not hard to identify. If your child begins to experience any of these signs, you should ask your doctor to run a test for diabetes. The symptoms may be a false alarm, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Typical Juvenile Diabetes warning Signs

1. A noticeable increase in the need to urinate - as a person with juvenile diabetes goes through his day, his blood glucose levels are continually rising. When the blood reach a saturation point, it needs to get rid of some of the glucose. The way it does this is through urination. Assuming that the child is eating normally and not drinking an excessive amount of liquids, this is a sign that his body is unable to process the glucose in his blood stream properly - so it needs to get rid of the glucose. If, however, your child is drinking excess amounts of water, the frequent urination may simply be a result of that.

2. Increased thirst - this symptoms is very much related to the need to urinate. The body needs water to live. When the body needs water, thirst is the mechanism that the body uses to force you to drink. If your child is constantly urinating because of his body’s need to get rid of excess glucose, it is inevitably going to become dehydrated. As this happens, the signal is sent to cause a thirst reaction so the child will drink.

3. Extreme weight loss - when you eat, your food is eventually broken down into food that the cells of the body can use directly - glucose. This is why glucose eventually winds up in the bloodstream - so the cell can feed from it. But what happens if, due to diabetes, the body is unable to use this food? Simple. The glucose is jettisoned out with the urine. To survive, the body then has to look for food in other places - the muscles and fats of the body. This is why weight loss occurs. The body is, in essence, cannibalizing itself in an attempt to survive.

4. Constant need to eat - since your child’s body is unable to use the food that he eats, he remains in a near constant state of hunger. Forcing him to eat more food, even as he loses weight and remains famished.

5. Feeling Tired - A child with diabetes can take in nourishment in the form of food, but his body can’t use. Without food, the cells can’t be energized. Therefore, the child will feel lifeless, listless, and tired.

Even though juvenile diabetes currently has no cure, it is very much treatable. That’s why when juvenile diabetes symptoms show up in your child, you want to determine as quickly as possible if he will need treatment - and if so, begin that treatment as soon as possible.

Diabetes Mellitus type I is also known as juvenile diabetes. It is a kind of diabetes mellitus that result from autoimmune damage of insulin-producing beta cells of pancreas. The successive lack of insulin is the cause of elevated glucose in the blood and urine. The result of this increase can be polyuria (frequent urination), polyphagia (increased hunger), polydipsia (increased thirst) and weight loss.

Type I diabetes is deadly unless cured by insulin. The best method of administering insulin is through injection. Inhaled insulin and insulin pumps had been available at several times. Transplants of pancreas have been used also to cure type I diabetes; however, this process is still currently being experimented.

There are no preventive measures against the expansion of type I diabetes. A lot of people who have developed type I are otherwise in a good state of life or healthy. Type 1 can be differentiated from type II diabetes through a C-peptide assay, which measures the production of endogenous insulin. Treatment of this type is continued in all cases forever. However, treatment is a burden for plenty of people.

Complications can be associated with both high and low blood sugar levels. Low glucose will lead to spasms or episodes of losing consciousness and needs emergency treatment. High glucose can lead to tiredness and can also lead to long term destruction to some parts of the body like the eyes an joints.

Causes of Type 1 Diabetes:

- Environment - this factor strongly influences the appearance of type 1. Some studies showed that for identical twins, if one had type 1, the other twin only had type I 30% - 50% of the time. In spite of having the right similar genome, 1 twin had the illness, and the other didn’t get the disease; this suggests that factors from the environment, in addition to factors from genetics, can influence the prevalence of the disease.

- Genetics - type 1 diabetes is polygenic in nature because of the different genes that contribute to its appearance. It depends on the locus or mixture of loci, it could be leading, recessive or somewhere in between. The strongest genetic material, IDDMI, can be seen in MHC Class 2 region in chromosome VI, at staining region VIp21. This is responsible for the histocompatibility disorder trait of type 1: pancreatic cells which produce insulin display antibodies that hit these beta cells. Weaker genes can be seen also on chromosomes 11 and 18.

Like most diabetics, you might as well be shocked to know that you are actually suffering from diabetes when you haven’t experienced any diabetes signs and symptoms. You must have never understood or felt any change in your system or in your body, since there aren’t many such changes occurring with diabetes. You have always felt good about yourself until of course you were diagnosed with diabetes.

Diabetes isn’t characterized by any telltale sign or symptom. However, there are certain conditions that have been associated with diabetes and that seems to be a sign. As there is no defined diabetes cause, the symptoms are mostly vague or usually an indication of some other disease. Lack of any prominent symptoms and slow emergence of the condition are the two main reasons why diabetes is often left undetected for long.

There are two classic diabetes signs and symptoms that develop out of persistently higher levels of blood glucose - frequent urination and increased thirst or desire to drink water. Also, there are many other relevant symptoms of the condition that must not be ignored:

Frequent Urination or Polyuria: Frequent urination is one of the early signs of diabetes. It mainly happens due to increased water intake, which is again a symptom of the diabetes.

Increased Thirst for Water or Polydipsia: Because excessive sugar tends to build up in the bloodstream when a person is suffering from diabetes, water is pulled from tissues. This makes you thirsty more frequently and that leads to more water consumption, which eventually is responsible for frequent urination.

Flu-like Symptoms: Symptoms of flu are quite common with diabetics. The feelings are almost like viral illnesses that include symptoms such as, weakness, fatigue, and body ache and appetite loss in some cases. As sugar is the main fuel of the body, it fails to enter your cells when you are having diabetes, thus failing to do its usual job. This leads to tiredness and weakness.

Increased Hunger: Intense hunger is triggered due to diabetes as the body does not contain adequate insulin for moving sugar into the cells. This makes your organs depleted due to lack of energy and you start feeling hungry.

Rapid Weight Loss: Despite eating plenty of foods, which is unusually more than what you eat to kill your hunger, you are likely to lose weight rapidly. As the body fails to use glucose properly, it tends to use the alternative fuel sources stored in the muscles and fats. The body burns more calories as too much of glucose is lost through urine.

Vision Problems: Diabetes can affect your eyesight, thus creating problems with vision. Blurred vision is very common with diabetics. As the blood sugar levels are high, the fluids contained in the eyes are pulled from your lenses, thus giving a blurred vision. Higher levels of blood pressure can also lead to the development of small blood vessels in the yes that bleed.

Frequent Infections: Diabetes prevents infections from healing quickly and also makes a person more vulnerable to sores and chronic infections. The sores once caused become increasingly difficult to heal.