Diabetes And Abnormal Sweating: What Is The Connection?

Diabetes and abnormal sweating: What is the connection?

Many people with diabetes will experience times when they sweat too much, too little, or at odd times.
Diabetes-related nervous system damage and low blood sugars cause these commonly experienced sweating conditions in people with diabetes.
Sweating complications can be a sign of poor diabetes management. Maintaining healthy blood sugar levels is crucial to both prevention and treatment.
Contents of this article:
Diabetes and sweating problems
People sweat for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons are normal and some are not.
Sweating is a natural response to physical and emotional stress. But excessive sweating, when the reason is unclear, is often a sign that something is not right. Some people with sweating conditions will sweat even on a cold day or during minimal activity.
Low blood sugar levels and diabetes-related nervous system damage cause the most commonly experienced sweating conditions in people with diabetes.
Extremely low blood sugars cause a fight-or-flight response, triggering the release of hormones that increase sweating.
When blood sugar levels are too high for too long, a loss of nerve function can occur. This condition is known as diabetic neuropathy. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) claim that around half of people with diabetes experience some form of neuropathy.
If the nerves that control the sweat glands are damaged, they may send the wrong message to sweat glands, or none at all. In most cases, neuropathies cause either excessive sweating or an inability to sweat.
Sweating caused by hypoglycemia
Hypoglycemia is a term to describe abnor Continue reading

Rate this article

Total 1 ratings

Red wine 'benefits people with type 2 diabetes'

A glass of red wine a day can improve cardiac health and help manage cholesterol for patients with type 2 diabetes, according to findings in a 2-year study published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
Moderate alcohol consumption has been linked to improved cardiovascular and total mortality rates, and a glass of red wine a day as part of a healthy diet has been considered beneficial for some time.
There is evidence that type 2 diabetes is less prevalent among moderate drinkers, yet the risk-benefit balance is controversial for such patients, due to a lack of long-term randomized studies.
Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev-Soroka Medical Center and Nuclear Research Center Negev, Israel, wondered if both red and white wine might improve glucose control, depending on alcohol metabolism and genetic profiling.
Previous research has suggested that ethanol (alcohol) is the key, meaning that alcoholic drinks other than red wine could be equally beneficial; others claim that red wine has particularly advantageous properties.
Potential benefits for people with type 2 diabetes
People with diabetes have a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease, as well as lower levels of "good" HDL cholesterol. High levels of HDL cholesterol can reduce the risk for heart disease and stroke, as it absorbs cholesterol and carries it back to the liver, where it is flushed from the body.
29.1 million people in the US probably have diabetes, or 9.3% of the population
21 million have been diagnosed
An estimated further 8.1 million have not been diagnosed.
Should patients Continue reading

How to

Reverse Diabetes
1 in 3 Americans could have it by 2050 if current trends continue. Follow this plan to stay out of danger and avoid becoming a statistic
By Lou Schuler | Photography by Stephen Voss | Illustrations by Remie Geoffroi
Kevin Mamon has no excuse. He was warned. He knows it, and his medical records prove it. Four years ago, a test showed that he had prediabetes, which, as the name suggests, is the intermediate step between normal, healthy blood sugar levels and full-blown type 2 diabetes. "I fooled myself for a long time, thinking I was healthy, but just a big dude," he says.
The 6'1" Mamon isn't kidding about his size, which had peaked north of 400 pounds. By the time he went to see Spencer Nadolsky, D.O., he was no longer so sure about the "healthy" part. It was March 15, 2016, one of many details he remembers with the clarity of a man who's had a conversion experience. He was a few weeks shy of his 42nd birthday and his weight had recently dropped to 373 pounds without any real effort on his part.
Unintentional weight loss, Mamon now knows, is one of the clearest warning signs of diabetes, along with constant thirst, urinary volume that would worry Seabiscuit, and nap inducing fatigue after every meal. He was about to become a statistic, one of 1.4 million Americans diagnosed with diabetes each year. (The American Diabetes Association estimates that of the 29 million who have the disease, a quarter don't know it yet.
You could be one of them. And your odds of having prediabetes is even higher—the latest research shows that a third of American adults are pre Continue reading

CONVERSATIONS

A growing body of research is finding that diabetes can take as devastating a toll on the brain as it takes on the body.
A new study published this week in the journal Neurology shows that people with Type 2 diabetes demonstrate a decline in cognitive skills and ability to perform daily activities over the course of only two years.
These changes are linked with an impaired ability to regulate blood flow in the brain, due in part to inflammation, which is a common component of Type 2 diabetes.
Normally, the brain distributes blood as needed to areas of increased neural activity. In diabetic individuals, however, this process becomes impaired.
“We have shown that people with diabetes have abnormal blood flow regulation in the brain, namely impaired ability to increase blood flow and deliver sugar and oxygen to the brain during episodes of increased mental activity,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Vera Novak of the Harvard Medical School, told The Huffington Post in an email. “Inflammation further alters blood flow regulation in diabetic people and contributes to mental and functional decline.”
For the study, the researchers recruited 65 men and women with an average age of 66, half of whom had Type 2 diabetes and half of whom did not. The participants were given a series of memory and cognition tests at the outset of the study and again two years later. They also received brain scans to measure brain volume and blood flow and blood tests to measure inflammation and blood sugar control.
Here are some of the key findings:
After two years, the people with diabetes showed Continue reading

Digital Contact Lenses Can Transform Diabetes Care

Google submitted a patent to the US Patent & Trademark Office in 2014 that described a digital, multi-sensor contact lens that can also detect blinking, with benefits like turning the page of an e-book with a “blink of an eye”. Later, more details about the idea emerged, revealing a much more transformative use for the contact lens – measuring blood glucose from tears.
How will the digital contact lens help diabetes patients?
Sensors are embedded between two soft layers of lens material and a pinhole in the lens allows tear fluid to seep into the sensor and be used to measure blood sugar levels. A wireless antenna, thinner than a human hair, will act as a controller to communicate information to the wireless device. Data will then be sent to an external device. Google engineers even considered adding LED lights that could warn the wearer by lighting up when the glucose levels have crossed above or below certain thresholds, but abandoned the idea as the arsenic content of LED could prove dangerous.
The contact lens analyzes blood glucose level every second and transmits the data to an associated app. Detailed readings are available at a tap on your phone. When blood sugar crosses certain thresholds, the app notifies you instantly to act, or to contact a physician if the situation is serious.
Keeping blood sugar levels optimal all day, avoiding spikes or lulls during sleep – these everyday problems wouldn’t depend on pure luck anymore. You could also forget about pricking your finger several times each day. As one of the most powerful ways technology will change dia Continue reading