Heart disease, stroke, blindness, amputation, and kidney failure. When doctors describe these complications of diabetes, they may sound a bit exaggerated – like an exaggerated worst-case scenario. Yet the truth is that these complications do occur when blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels are out of the normal range.
“A lot of people think these complications don’t really occur to them,” says David C. Ziemer, MD, director of the diabetes clinic at Grady Hospital in Atlanta, GA, “and for many people, when they do develop a complication, it’s It’s time to wake up. An infected foot, for example. It’s an unpleasant wake-up call.”
If your diabetes symptoms are not controlled, a serious and deep-rooted foot infection could mean you lose a toe, foot, or leg because the only way to save your life is to have it amputated. Please take this seriously.
How is this possible? The answer is: it is possible. Over time, high blood sugar can slowly damage the blood vessels, nerves, and organs in your body. The higher the blood sugar level in your body and the longer it lasts, the more damage it causes. Smoking and drinking alcohol can deepen this damage to your body.
Slow progression of disease
“The damage goes slowly, and it can take years before it happens. It may start when your blood sugar level rises slightly,” said Ronald Goldberg, M.D., associate director of the Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami Medical Center, “and the damage may be done before you’re even diagnosed with diabetes.” .
Ronald told Webmade that diabetes causes damage a little differently for everyone, whether it’s to the nerves, the eyes or the kidneys.
The problem is that “many people don’t realize they have diabetes until long after they have it,” David said. “Most people have an average history of 5-7 years before they are diagnosed with diabetes.”
What are the serious complications of diabetes?
The risk of developing complications from diabetes increases as blood vessels, nerves, and organs become damaged. Here are a few of the most serious scenarios:
Heart disease
Double the risk of heart disease, myocardial infarction, heart failure, and stroke. At least 65% of people with diabetes die from heart disease and stroke.
Ocular complications
The major eye complication (diabetic retinopathy) is related to problems with blood vessels in the eye. Diabetes is a major cause of preventable blindness; cataracts and glaucoma due to diabetes are also common.
Neuropathy
Less blood flows to the nerves, and high blood sugar causes pain, burning, and numbness in the nerves (peripheral neuropathy).
Infection in the legs or feet
Severe leg and foot infections, even gangrene and amputation, are caused by poor circulation, lack of oxygen and nutrition to muscle tissue, and nerve damage.
Renal damage
Kidney damage (diabetic nephropathy) is a common complication in people with diabetes.
Preventing diabetic complications
David told Webermead that diabetic complications are indeed serious, but they are not inevitable. “Controlling blood sugar is the most critical factor in preventing diabetic complications. But it’s hard for people to understand how important it is,” he said, “and it’s hard to get patients to take it seriously.”
Ways to control blood sugar
Controlling blood sugar isn’t always hard. Sometimes all you need to do is make lifestyle changes, eat right, exercise regularly, lose weight, and get your blood sugar levels into a safe range. If you’re a smoker, there’s no doubt you have to quit.
In addition, relieving stress in your life can help control your blood sugar, in the same way that depression is handled. Both stress and depression increase levels of cortisol, a hormone that affects blood sugar. “Cortisol worsens diabetes,” David told Webermead, “and there is evidence that treating depression may help control blood sugar.” He is leading a study to test the link between the two.
How do drugs prevent diabetes complications?
For some people, taking just one diabetes medication doesn’t work well. Complex new drugs like exenatide, selegiline and pramlintide can treat high blood sugar in different ways. “All of these new drugs have a lot of efficacy,” said David, a professor of endocrinology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Ga.
If you need to use insulin, then you’ll feel pretty good about the injections. “The new insulins are not that cumbersome,” David explains. You don’t need a lot of needles and vials on the table. The new insulins can be injected directly into the body through an injection pen, something like a writing pen. Insulin oral sprays and insulin patches are also in development.
What are the benefits of controlling blood sugar?
By controlling blood sugar, damage to nerves and blood vessels can be slowed. It may even be possible to eliminate all damage completely. The benefits of controlling blood sugar are seen in many ways.
Pain or numbness in the hands, arms, feet and legs can be relieved. “When most of the damage to the nerves is stopped, it prevents the pain from getting worse,” David explains, “and no drug can repair the damaged nerves. In most cases, we can only protect the nerves that have not been damaged.”
David added that controlling blood sugar can prevent gum disease and tooth loss. “In fact, when gum infections are controlled, it also helps with blood sugar control. Gum infections can increase inflammation in the body, which can make it more difficult to control diabetes.”
Don’t put off dental checkups, David said. “A lot of people with diabetes end up losing a lot of teeth. No one likes to go to the dentist, including me. But it’s very important to go to the dentist.”
The efficacy of medication
Diabetes experts also agree that blood sugar is not the only problem. If there are cholesterol and blood pressure problems (and there usually are), aggressive medication is needed. Both of these conditions can affect the health of large and small blood vessels and greatly exacerbate the damage that diabetes can cause.
Cholesterol-lowering drugs such as statins are commonly used in patients with diabetes. Blood pressure medications such as angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors can also boost blood flow throughout the body, including the legs and kidneys. “These drugs protect the kidneys from damage and protect the heart muscle to prevent heart failure,” David told Webermead.
It’s dangerous to have these diabetes complications. Can you really prevent the worst from happening? “Of course you can,” Ronald told Webermead, “if you follow the above advice, you can greatly reduce the risk of myocardial infarction, stroke, blindness, amputation, and kidney vascular damage. But you must act as early as possible. It is important to control all body indicators according to the above recommendations and keep them strictly within safe limits.”