High-Risk Patients with Diabetes

Diabetes is one disease that does not come from out of nowhere. It is slowly but surely developed by an individual either through negligence or ignorance. There is hardly anyone who actually desires and works in order to get this particular disease by a certain age.

As underrated as it may seem, it certainly isn’t up there with the to-do-lists of a person before they die. And so we’re here to help you identify several risk factors that you might run into when you are on the road to a life imprisoned with diabetes.

One of the most acute indicators of the disease is the blood sugar metabolism which is believed to be a precursor of diabetes even years before clear manifestations of the disease is seen by the individual or the doctors.

Health experts are now consistently looking at several solid indicators of patients who may have a high risk of diabetes.

Impaired Fasting Glucose

This is a particularly significant indicator as a person with an impaired fasting glucose is also susceptible to increase their risk for stroke as well as heart disease. So what exactly constitutes impaired fasting glucose?

Well, for starters, a person who is diagnosed to be a diabetic is a person who has a fasting blood sugar greater than 126mg/dl. There is another group that for those who fall under this range. It is those people who have a fasting blood sugar value of 110 mg/dl to 126 mg/dl.

This is a concern for those who are in the medical field simply because this group has a greater chance to develop type 2 diabetes when compared to the normal population whose fasting blood sugar levels are certainly lower than those in this range.

While it is important to also note other factors that will essentially increase one’s risk of developing diabetes, a good indication of a person developing diabetes in the long run is if he or she has a fasting blood sugar level that falls within the 110 mg/dl to 126 mg/dl range.

Irregular menstruation

One of the strangest and unpreventable factors that a woman might encounter with regard to risk indicators of diabetes is delayed menstruation. This is particularly much more prominent in obese women.

There was a study which concluded that those women who had a cycle of more than 40 days increased their likelihood of developing the disease by as much as 50 percent. This is attributed to polycystic ovary disease which is known to be a significant risk factor for type 2 diabetes. This is why it is important that women should regularly have consultations with their physicians.

These are only two risk indicators of diabetes. However mild they may be, it is understood that one should not underestimate the fact that most of these risk indicators can be dealt with accordingly if one is prudent enough to have a checkup and consult with his physician about his overall health.

Diabetes and African American

The disease that is diabetes became an unnatural cause of death among African Americans at the turn of the century. By 1993, however, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, death certificates listed diabetes as the fifth leading cause of death for African Americans aged 45 to 64, and the third leading cause of death for those aged 65 and older in 1990.

Diabetes is more dangerous for African-American women, for whom it was the third leading cause of death for all ages in 1990. Diabetes death rates may actually be higher than these studies show for two reasons. First, diabetes might not have been diagnosed. Second, many doctors do not list diabetes as a cause of death, even when the person was known to have diabetes.

African Americans experience higher rates of three diabetes complications – blindness, kidney failure, and amputations. They also experience greater disability from these complications. Some factors that influence the frequency of these complications, such as delay in diagnosis and treatment of diabetes, denial of diabetes, abnormal blood lipids, high blood pressure, and cigarette smoking, can be influenced by proper diabetes management.

The following are the most common complications that one may run into when diabetes is left unchecked. There are even more diseases and complications that might come after diabetes. It is through constant regular checkup and consultations with doctors that one will be able to pick up signs of whether one already is in danger of having this disease.

Kidney Failure

African Americans experience kidney failure, also called end-stage renal disease (ESRD), from 2.5 to 5.5 times more often than white Americans. Interestingly though, hypertension, not diabetes, is the leading cause of kidney failure in black Americans. Hypertension accounts for almost 38 percent of ESRD cases in African Americans, whereas diabetes causes 32.5 percent. In spite of their high rates of the disease, African Americans have better survival rates from kidney failure than white Americans.

Visual Impairment

The frequency of severe visual impairment is 40 percent higher in African Americans with diabetes than in white Americans. This is a very significant fact that should prompt more focus on the community. Blindness caused by diabetic retinopathy is twice as common in blacks as in whites. Compared to white women, black women are three times more likely to become blind from diabetes. African-American men have a 30 percent higher rate of blindness from diabetes than white American men. Diabetic retinopathy may occur more frequently in black Americans than whites because of their higher rate of hypertension.

Amputations

African Americans undergo more diabetes-related lower-extremity amputations than white or Hispanic Americans. One study of 1990 U.S. hospital discharge figures showed amputation rates for African Americans with diabetes were 19 percent higher than for white Americans. In a 1991 California study, however, African Americans were 72 percent more likely to have diabetes-related amputations than white Americans, and 117 percent more likely than Hispanic Americans.

Having a Healthy Pregnancy with Diabetes

This dreaded disease of diabetes is an illness which affects the blood sugar levels of a person. If a person is diagnosed with diabetes, that means that the amount of sugar in that person’s blood is much too high for the body to cope with.

The body simply cannot generate enough insulin for it to use up the sugar that is present in a person’s blood or the condition could simply be a manifestation of the person’s body’s failure to utilize insulin properly. Insulin is the hormone that is created by the pancreas in order to directly turn a person’s blood sugar into energy or maybe even transform it and store it as fat.

Aside from the fact that there are some women who have preexisting diabetes before their pregnancy, there are cases in which women who are bearing a child in their womb develop diabetes. These women generally constitute around 2 to 5 percent of the current population. This is called “gestational diabetes”. Today, despite the disease, these women do have an opportunity to have their baby as healthy as any newborn child.

Risks to the baby

There are those women who already have diabetes before their pregnancy and those women might not have been taking care of their condition during that time. For these types of women who have been very careless with their disorder, their babies are three to four times more likely to have dangerous birth defects than those women who do not have diabetes.

These types of birth defects can range from heart defects to brain defects to NTD, which is short for neural tube defect which might be identified in the future as anencephaly, encephalocele or spina bifida. Another thing is that pregnant women have an increased risk of miscarriage or stillbirth which is when the fetus dies in the womb of the mother or while being delivered.

Risks to the mother

For women who have preexisting or gestational diabetes might cause some problems for the women in the sense that they might have significant trouble while delivering the baby.

Women who have not been able to control their diabetes during pregnancy are at an increased risk of having their baby develop a disorder which is called macrosomia. This condition develops because of increased sugar that is in the blood. What happens is that the babies which have macrosomia grow to be very large (up to 10 pounds or more) because the sugar from the mother’s blood is passed onto the baby and thus the baby’s body compensates by producing more insulin for these sugars to be stored as fat.

Because of the exaggerated amounts of sugar, this particular reaction happens and the fat that is produced is stored around the shoulders and the trunk of the infant. The added girth that these infants have essentially translate to an increased difficulty for the mother if she is having a normal vaginal delivery. This could put the mother at risk for serious injuries during childbirth.

Diabetes and Impotence

Diabetes is like a spiderweb concerting not one but more complications in the body. Starting from the blood sugar level to the heart, kidneys, eyes, and nervous system.

Recent studies have prove diabetes can even cause impotence among

men. Since diabetes can damage the the peripheral nervous system, which includes nerves from the spine to the brain and the rest of the nerves of the body. The harm done by the diabetes on the nervous system leads to impotence. Nerves serve as messengers of the body. It the main connecting point of the rest of the body to the brain.

To have high blood glucose for years harms the covering on the nerves. It is the peripheral, autonomic, and cranial nerves which is directly harmed by diabetes. Due to high glucose in the blood, less oxygen in brought to the nerves. Nerves that are damaged sends wrong messages to the other parts of the body, this includes the sexual organs.

As mentioned earlier, diabetes also affects the autonomic nerves. It is this part of the nervous system that regulates the organ function of the most. Moreover, it also modulates homeostasis and mostly not capable of voluntary control. The automatic system is usually referred in academic textbooks as the visceral system.

The major role of the autonomic system is to transmit impulses from the Central Nervous System to the peripheral organ systems. It regulates and control heart rate and force of contraction, contraction and relaxation of smooth muscle in various organs, constriction and dilatation of blood vessels, pupillary size and secretions both from exocrine and endocrine glands.

The fact that the automatic system controls the organs can be a in great risk when one has diabetes. The damage diabetes can do to the body is extensive that even impotence and erectile dysfunction is among the list. Researches have discovered a particular sugar to present in diabetics intervene with the chain of nerves commanding for the penis to maintain erection.

Diabetic erectile dysfunction is caused partially by the interruption in an enzyme starting the chain of vascular events resulting to erection. A team of researches surmise O-GlcNAc, a blood sugar that exist in hyperglycemic circumstances as the interrupting factor.

An estimate of 50-70 percent of men with diabetes suffer erectile dysfunction You have to take note that diabetic erectile dysfunction is unlike the usual case of impotence that can be treated with Viagra.

Men get an erection when there is a sexual stimulus, thus it follows– activating an enzyme called neuronal nitric oxide synthase. These enzymes cause short term release of nitric oxide at the end of the penis.

The sugar O-GlcNAc impede these events by suppressing the NOs. The consequent reduction of NOs discharged prevents the smooth muscle of the penis from relaxing. No relaxation means no production of NOs, thus no normal and prolonged hard on.

Studies show and emphasize those with diabetes suffer from reduced blood vessel function. The vascular function is very important in erectile response and the dysfunction in the blood vessels no doubt lessens the erection.

Sex is an essential part of a relationship. Though it is not the very important level for other people, being humans, still give us sexual urge. Having sex is part of our being human or being mammals so to speak. Having an erectile dysfunction can cause embarrassment for most men. However, the advancement in medicine presents options to treat it.

Complications from Diabetes

What is diabetes?

Insulin is a vital hormone in the body as it helps glucose to be properly used by the body. Without the production of the insulin, sugar will not be converted into the necessary energy resulting to diabetes– a state wherein the sugar level in the bloodstream becomes very high.

Too mush sugar in the body serves like a poison since its not working its purpose to give the necessary energy to the cells of our body. In short, the fuel becomes venomous to the body if kept to a high level.

This state is what we call diabetes.

The worst thing about diabetes, is it merely does not concern the sugar level of the body but complications originate from this illness. Short term complications include hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, keteoacidosis, and hyperosmolar syndrome. Long term complications, on the other hand, may extend to heart disease, kidney disease, neuropathy, disease of the eyes, peripheral vascular disease and so much more depending on the status of the patient.

Most common complications of diabetes:

Heart Disease

Heart disease is one of the most deadly of all illnesses. It can strike anytime without a person even knowing about it. It is believed and proved people with diabetes are likely to be twice more susceptible and vulnerable to heart disease. It is not only common to diabetics but progresses quicker than for a normal person. The hardening of the arteries is swift when a person has diabetes.

Having diabetes slows down the LDL’s or low density proteins to be carried to the heart. LDL’s are essential for it carries the needed cholesterol all through out the circulatory system. The unneeded cholesterol, however, is carried back to the liver when not utilized.

Too much glucose in the body can slow down the circulation of LDLs making it sticky. Thus, cholesterol gets stuck building up on the blood vessel walls. It is for this reason, diabetics are pliable to heart attack.

Blood Pressure

Blood pressure is very much related to the function of the heart. Hypertension actually adds to the workload of the heart, arteries, and kidney. Often, high blood pressure is considered to be a silent killer precisely because it cannot be detected until the moment comes.

The complication of having high blood is that it affects other parts of the body. And since the regulation of the blood is irregular for diabetics, the risk of having blood pressure is high. It’s a tandem that can cause more than heart disease but can go as far as eye, kidney, and nerve complications.

Depression

There are two most common types of diabetes. Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 usually develops by the age of 40 and is characterized by the body’s inability to produce insulin. Type 2 on the other hand, is wherein a person still produces small amount of insulin that may or may not function in the body. Most people with Type 2 diabetes are overweighted.

Studies have shown, diabetics are very prone to depression and conversely, can increase the risks of diabetes particularly with type 2 diabetes. The tediousness of monitoring one’s diabetes which include strict compliance to medications, eating habits, and constant exercise can be very overwhelming to diabetics. This overwhelmed feeling transcends to fatigue and loss of interest.

Depression gets worse as the complications increase. The routines predisposed by being a diabetic causes fatigue and lack of enthusiasm resulting to withdrawal from reality.

Depression, just like having heart disease and blood pressure is twice prompted by diabetes.

Diabetic Neuropathy

This particular complication affects the nerves of the body and may develop for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Sadly, this complication causes a great deal of pain and numbness in the body.

Since it is a long term effect of diabetes, it develops slowly making itself known after a few years. Nerve damage happens over time and this is caused by the high blood glucose levels. The longer an individual have had diabetes, the more likely he or she acquires neuropathy.

Diabetes can cause a lot of complications. These complications are a lifetime struggle, however, thorough medication and constant monitoring of one’s health can help in preventing these complications. Much more to consider, perhaps, is to discipline one’s self early on to avoid diabetes in later years.

How Gestational Diabetes Can Affect Your Baby

Gestational diabetes affects the mother in late pregnancy, after the baby’s body has been formed, but while the baby is busy growing. Because of this, gestational diabetes does not cause the kinds of birth defects sometimes seen in babies whose mothers had diabetes before pregnancy.

However, untreated or poorly controlled gestational diabetes can hurt your baby. When you have gestational diabetes, your pancreas works overtime to produce insulin, but the insulin does not lower your blood glucose levels.

Although insulin does not cross the placenta, glucose and other nutrients do. So extra blood glucose goes through the placenta, giving the baby high blood glucose levels. This causes the baby’s pancreas to make extra insulin to get rid of the blood glucose. Since the baby is getting more energy than it needs to grow and develop, the extra energy is stored as fat.

This can lead to macrosomia, or a “fat” baby. Babies with macrosomia face health problems of their own, including damage to their shoulders during birth. Because of the extra insulin made by the baby’s pancreas, newborns may have very low blood glucose levels at birth and are also at higher risk for breathing problems. Babies with excess insulin become children who are at risk for obesity and adults who are at risk for type 2 diabetes.

What Is Gestational Diabetes

Gestational diabetes is a type of diabetes that occurs only during pregnancy. Like other forms of diabetes, gestational diabetes affects the way your body uses sugar (glucose) – your body’s main source of fuel. The result may be dangerously high blood sugar levels. Pregnant women who have never had diabetes before but who have high blood sugar (glucose) levels during pregnancy are said to have gestational diabetes.

What are the cause of gestional diabetes?

We don’t know what causes gestational diabetes, but we have some clues. The placenta supports the baby as it grows. Hormones from the placenta help the baby develop. But these hormones also block the action of the mother’s insulin in her body. This problem is called insulin resistance. Insulin resistance makes it hard for the mother’s body to use insulin. She may need up to three times as much insulin.

What are the risk factors?

Age. Women older than age 25 are more likely to develop gestational diabetes.

Family or personal history. Your risk of developing gestational diabetes increases if you have prediabetes a precursor to type 2 diabetes or a close family member, such as a parent or sibling, has type 2 diabetes. You’re also more likely to develop gestational diabetes if you had it during a previous pregnancy, if you delivered a baby who weighed more than 9 pounds, or if you had an unexplained stillbirth.

Weight. You’re more likely to develop gestational diabetes if you’re overweight before pregnancy.

Race. For reasons that aren’t clear, women who are black, Hispanic, American Indian or Asian are more likely to develop gestational diabetes than are other women.