In order to prevent the disease, it is necessary to know the main symptoms of diabetes. Diabetes mellitus is a chronic endocrine disease caused by absolute or partial insulin insufficiency or tissue insensitivity to this hormone.
This disease is often referred to as the "silent killer". Statistics show that around 50% of patients are unaware of their problem and continue to live a normal life as sugar slowly destroys their body.
According to the World Health Organization, this disease includes the top 3 of all diseases after cardiovascular and oncological pathology. According to their forecasts, the number of patients will double every 15 years.
All this testifies to the need for correct, and most importantly, timely diagnosis and adequate treatment of the disease. Everyone should know the first symptoms of diabetes mellitus in the modern world and be ready to start therapy.
Early Signs of Disease
Let's look in detail, what can be the symptoms of diabetes? Diabetes, like any other pathological process, has an early phase with very extensive symptoms, a peak phase, and a terminal phase.
In order not to bring the case to an unfavorable end, it is necessary to suspect the presence of the disease in time and consult a doctor. The very first symptoms of diabetes tend to disguise themselves as colds.
These include:
- Constant tiredness and need for sleep.
- Frequent urination, urinary incontinence, nocturnal urination.
- A significant decrease in body weight for no apparent reason.
- Long healing time for small wounds, cuts.
- Decreased sexual activity in men, problems with premature ejaculation.
- Hunger that is difficult to satisfy with the usual portions, which occurs even without physical exertion.
- Deterioration in vision, blurred vision and double vision.
- Slight tingling in the tips of the fingers or toes. Violations of small movements and tactile sensitivity.
- Thirst in diabetes and desire to drink plenty of fluids. The volume of moisture consumed daily can exceed 3-4 liters.
- Urinary and genital tract infections in women.
As you can see, these symptoms are very non-specific and are often attributed to hard work, stress, or a cold. But if they started to develop in a person, the best solution would be to consult a doctor and have a blood test for sugar and glycated hemoglobin>.
Symptoms of the disease in minors
The first symptoms of diabetes mellitus in children in most cases coincide with those in adults. However, there are nuances that you need to know for a timely diagnosis.
The first "bells" for children from 7 years old can be:
- Polydipsia, or intense thirst. Even with normal physical activity, the child wants to drink constantly.
- Urinary incontinence during sleep if this has not happened before.
- A significant decrease in body weight with proper nutrition.
- Frequent episodes of nausea and vomiting.
- Problems at school, poor performance, mood swings, aggressiveness.
- Increased bacterial skin diseases (furunculosis, carbuncles, barley and others), constant itching.
- During puberty, girls can develop thrush or other bacterial lesions.
The problem is that parents ignore such signs in their children, which often leads to the appearance of hyperglycemic coma and the development of pronounced complications that are difficult to treat.
It is important to be able to suspect diabetes even in very young children. You can't say what's bothering you, but mom or dad must be able to understand their child.
The first symptoms of hyperglycemia in infants can be the following phenomena:
- With an excellent appetite, the child gains weight poorly or not at all.
- The constant restlessness of the baby, which only goes away after drinking.
- The occurrence of diaper rash in the groin that occurs more frequently than usual and does not respond to standard treatment.
- A special condition of diapers after drying children's urine - they are like starched.
- Maybe the formation of sticky patches on surfaces where the baby's urine went.
- With the acute development of the disease, vomiting, diarrhea and dehydration of the body can occur sharply.
The ability to suspect illness is crucial. Unfortunately, sometimes ordinary people do not fully understand the severity of the first signs of diabetes. Due to such an incorrect attitude towards yourself and your health, more than half of the cases in which the correct diagnosis is made fall on terminal conditions - hyperglycemic coma.
Its symptoms are:
- loss of consciousness of the patient;
- dry skin;
- drop in blood pressure and increased heart rate;
- characteristic smell of acetone from the mouth.
In the presence of such a picture, the patient requires immediate hospitalization with adequate drug therapy with insulin.
In order to prevent the occurrence of such conditions and diseases in general, every citizen should know about the first signs and symptoms of diabetes.