How Can Diabetes Affect The Feet?

How can diabetes affect the feet?

People with diabetes are prone to foot problems caused by prolonged periods of high blood sugar. There are two main foot problems, each of which can have serious complications.
Diabetes is a disease where the body cannot produce insulin or cannot use it effectively. Insulin is the hormone that is responsible for helping the cells take in sugar to use for energy. When this does not happen properly, the levels of sugar in the blood can become too high.
Prolonged periods of high sugar levels in the blood can wreak havoc on many areas of the body, including the feet.
Diabetic foot problems
The two main foot problems that affect people with diabetes are:
Diabetic neuropathy
Over time, diabetes can cause nerve damage that makes it hard for people with diabetes to feel sensation in their extremities.
The condition also makes it difficult for a person to feel an irritation on their foot or notice when their shoes are rubbing. This lack of sensation and awareness leads to an increase in the risk of cuts, sores, and blisters developing.
Peripheral vascular disease
Diabetes leads to changes in the blood vessels, including arteries. In peripheral vascular disease, fatty deposits block these vessels beyond the brain and heart. It tends to affect the blood vessels leading to and from the extremities, reducing blood flow to the hands and feet.
Reduced blood flow can lead to pain, infection, and slow healing wounds. Severe infections may lead to amputation.
Symptoms
Symptoms may vary from person to person and may depend on what issues a person is experiencing at the time. Symptoms of diabe Continue reading

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The Genetics of Diabetes

Why me? How did I deserve this? Am I to blame? These are questions that many people ask when diagnosed with a serious condition or disease.
Unfortunately, there’s no clear-cut answer when it comes to diabetes. Unlike some traits, diabetes doesn’t seem to be inherited in a simple pattern, and there is a lot of misinformation out there about its causes. (Have you ever had to explain that diabetes doesn’t happen because someone ate too much sugar?)
It’s apparent, though, that some people are born more likely to develop diabetes than others. We know that type 1 and type 2 diabetes have different causes, but genetics plays an important role in both types. People with diabetes inherit a predisposition to the disease, then something in their environment triggers it.
Identical twins are proof that genes alone are not enough, however. Identical twins have identical genes; therefore, they should have the same genetic risk for a disease—right? Not necessarily. Research has found that if one identical twin has type 1 diabetes, the other twin will get the disease about 50 percent of the time. For type 2 diabetes, that risk rises to as much as 4 in 5. In both type 1 and type 2, identical twins have a much higher risk of both developing diabetes than non-identical (fraternal) twins, which further supports the fact that genetics is involved.
So what are the causes of type 1 diabetes? Again, we know that genetics is involved. We also know that it’s not just one gene responsible, but many different genes, each of which contributes only a small part of the risk. Scientists have id Continue reading

What Happens When You Go into a Diabetic Coma?

Diabetes comes along with a lot of complications and another such life-threatening condition that can affect both type 1 and type 2 diabetes patients is a diabetic coma. It is a situation, where the person although alive, cannot respond to any sights, sounds, or any other types of physical simulations. In this article, we shall know more about diabetes coma and what happens when a person slips into one. So, join in for the article “What Happens When You Go into a Diabetic Coma?”
What is Diabetic Coma?
Diabetic coma is a life-threatening condition caused due to either very high or very low glucose levels in a diabetes patient. It affects patients with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. The major risk factors for this type of condition increases when you are on an insulin pump, have fallen sick and the blood sugar has risen dramatically, you have had a heart failure or a kidney-related disease, you have the habit of drinking too much of alcohol, or even when you have failed to manage your diabetes effectively.
In the following paragraphs, we shall study the symptoms and causes of this fatal condition in detail.
Symptoms of Diabetic Coma
Let us now look into the signs and symptoms which help us understand that a person is slipping into diabetes coma. As mentioned above, it can occur either in cases of hyperglycemia or very high levels of blood glucose or in the case of hypoglycemia or low levels of blood glucose. So, let us look into the symptoms of each:
Signs of hyperglycemia or high blood sugar
The patient experiences high level of thirst and urination
Stomach pain is ano Continue reading

Home blood glucose test: How to test for diabetes at home

Home blood glucose testing is a safe and affordable way to detect diabetes before it becomes a health issue.
Diabetes, especially in the early stages, does not always cause symptoms. Almost half of people with the disease don't know they have it.
For people already diagnosed with diabetes, a simple diabetes home test is vital in the management of blood sugar levels. It could even be lifesaving.
How to test for diabetes at home
Home blood glucose monitoring is designed to offer a picture of how the body is processing glucose.
A doctor might recommend testing at three different times, and often over the course of several days:
Morning fasting reading: This provides information about blood glucose levels before eating or drinking anything. Morning blood glucose readings give a baseline number that offers clues about how the body processes glucose during the day.
Before a meal: Blood glucose before a meal tends to be low, so high blood glucose readings suggest difficulties managing blood sugar.
After a meal: Post meal testing gives a good idea about how your body reacts to food, and if sugar is able to efficiently get into the cells for use. Blood glucose readings after a meal can help diagnose gestational diabetes, which happens during pregnancy. Most doctors recommend testing about 2 hours after a meal.
For the most accurate testing, people should log the food they eat, and notice trends in their blood glucose readings. Whether you consume a high or low carbohydrate meal, if your blood sugar reading is higher than normal afterwards, this suggests the body is having difficulty Continue reading

Myth: sugar causes diabetes

We all know the stereotype – if you’ve got diabetes, you must have eaten too much sugar. But, with this sweet ingredient found in so much of our food – and, recently, so many of our newspapers – what’s the truth about sugar? And how does it affect diabetes?
What is sugar?
Sugar is found naturally in fruit, vegetables and dairy foods. It’s also added to food and drink by food manufacturers, or by ourselves at home. The debate about sugar and health is mainly around the ‘added sugars’. This includes:
table sugar that we add to our hot drinks or breakfast cereal
caster sugar, used in baking
sugars hidden in sauces, ready meals, cakes and drinks.
Does sugar cause diabetes?
There are two main types of diabetes – Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.
In Type 1 diabetes, the insulin producing cells in your pancreas are destroyed by your immune system. No amount of sugar in your diet – or anything in your lifestyle – has caused or can cause you to get Type 1 diabetes.
With Type 2 diabetes, though we know sugar doesn’t directly causes Type 2 diabetes, you are more likely to get it if you are overweight. You gain weight when you take in more calories than your body needs, and sugary foods and drinks contain a lot of calories.
And it's important to add that fatty foods and drinks are playing a part in our nation's expanding waistline.
So you can see if too much sugar is making you put on weight, then you are increasing your risk of getting Type 2 diabetes. But Type 2 diabetes is complex, and sugar is unlikely to be the only reason the condition develops.
If I have diabet Continue reading