Type 2 Diabetes In Women: Young, Slim, And Diabetic

Type 2 Diabetes in Women: Young, Slim, and Diabetic

Stephanie Yi, 29, had a body most women would kill for. She never had to work hard to maintain her long-limbed, flat-bellied frame—weekend hikes near her northern California home and lots of spinach salads did the trick. She could easily afford to indulge her sweet tooth with the occasional buttery, sugary snack. At 5'7" and 120 pounds, she had, she figured, hit the good-genes jackpot.
But everything changed two years ago, when a crippling fatigue left her sidelined from college classes. Listless, she dragged herself to a doctor, who suspected a thyroid imbalance. A blood test and a few days later, she received the alarming results: Her thyroid was fine; her blood sugar levels were not. She was prediabetic and on the cusp of developing type 2.
Stephanie was stunned. Of course, she'd heard diabetes was a health crisis. (At last count, 26 million Americans had the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) But weren't type 2 diabetics fat, sedentary, and on junk-food-and-soda diets? Stephanie hadn't been to a drive-through in ages; she didn't touch meat. Yet, somehow, she'd gotten an illness most slim women dodge.
A Growing Threat
The CDC estimates that one in nine adults has diabetes and, if current trends continue, one in three will be diabetic by the year 2050. For decades, typical type 2 patients were close to what Stephanie pictured: heavy and inactive. They were also older, often receiving a diagnosis in middle age or beyond. But while such type 2 cases continue to skyrocket, there has been a disturbing increase in a much younger set.
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Body Odor & Diabetes: Does Diabetes Cause Body Odor?

Are you diabetic? Does your body emanate bad breath which it has never done before? Do not worry. You are not the only one experiencing something of this sort. The high level of blood glucose combined with many complications in diabetes tends to cause body odor in the patients. In this article, we shall analyze the reasons and the relationship between diabetes and body odor. Join in for the article Body Odor and Diabetes: Does Diabetes Cause Body Odor?”
What is Diabetes Body Odor?
Diabetes body odor refers to the sudden change of smell that you experience due to diabetes. There are several reasons why diabetes might lead to bad odor in the patients.
There are two main types of sweat one of which could be responsible for the bad body odor in a diabetes patient. One of these sweats is called eccrine which is essentially odorless and is mainly responsible for controlling the temperature of the body. The second of these sweats is known as the apocrine. This is the sweat you generally get under your armpits and is secreted by the apocrine gland. This is the one which is mainly responsible for producing bad odor as when it gets hit by bacteria, there is an unpleasant smell that is emitted. The following paragraph explains in detail the causes of bad odor in diabetes patients.
Causes of Body Odor in Diabetes
There are several reasons and ways in which diabetes can cause body odor in the patients. These reasons and causes of the same are explained in the following points:
People with diabetes are known to be affected by a number of complications in the body. One such complication Continue reading

Diabetes: Protect Your Feet and Legs

If you have diabetes, you are more likely than people without this disorder to develop leg and foot problems. Diabetes can destroy nerves and cause you to have poor circulation. Left unchecked, these complications can lead to amputation. But there's a lot you can do to prevent that from happening.
How Diabetes Causes Limb Problems
First, it's important to understand what causes these diabetes complications. According to Marilyn Tan, MD, an endocrinologist and the clinic chief of the Stanford Endocrine Clinic in California, risk factors include poor circulation from atherosclerotic peripheral arterial disease, poor wound healing, and uncontrolled blood sugar increases, which increases the risk of infection. “Think of sugar as fuel for bacteria and fungus,” says Dr. Tan.
Researchers also know that high blood glucose levels can cause nerve damage called diabetic neuropathy. The damage can occur in any part of your body, but it is most common in your arms and legs, with the lower extremities affected first. This type of nerve damage is known as peripheral neuropathy. Some people have no symptoms, while others experience numbness, tingling, burning, sharp pain, cramps, extreme sensitivity when touched, and a loss of coordination and balance.
When you have peripheral neuropathy, small sores can go unnoticed because of the numbness — you simply don’t feel them. Left untreated, these little problems can become major infections that invade the bones. What’s more, poor circulation from diabetes means any ulcers and infections are harder to heal. If an infection invades your Continue reading

10 Life-Saving Things You Must Do If You Have Diabetes

Be first on line for your flu shot
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Any infection, including the flu, can wreak havoc on blood sugar levels and diabetes control, according to Joseph A. Aloi, MD, the section chief of endocrinology and metabolism at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "If you're living with diabetes, infections can lead to more complications, and if you are hospitalized, your hospital stay will be longer than people without diabetes, so the key is to prevent infections in the first place." Get your flu shot and get it early, he adds. Flu season in the United States can begin as early as October and last as late as May. Also talk to your doctor about shots for pneumonia and Hepatitis B prevention. "Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands," adds Davida F. Kruger, a nurse and diabetes expert at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, and the author of The Diabetes Travel Guide. "If you want to stay healthy, carry hand sanitizer with you wherever you go in case you can't access a sink." (Find out how you're probably washing your hands all wrong.)
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See your eye doctor yearly for a comprehensive dilated eye exam. "If we catch eye changes early, we can prevent further damage," Dr. Aloi says. "Diabetes is still the leading cause of adult blindness and it is largely preventable." Unfortunately, this message doesn't seem to be getting through. Some 58 percent of people with diabetes did not have regular follow-up eye exams, according to research presented at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology in Chicago. Thes Continue reading

How to Help Your Body Reverse Diabetes

Diabetes rates are rising, in fact it is now considered an “epidemic” in the medical community. The American Diabetes Association reports that:
23.6 million Americans have diabetes
57 million Americans are pre-diabetic
1.6 new cases of diabetes are reported each year
For those over age 60, almost 1 in 4 have diabetes
Diabetes is the 7th leading cause of death
Diabetes increases heart attack risk and 68% of diabetes related death certificates report heart related problems
75% of adults with diabetes will develop high blood pressure
Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness, kidney failure and nervous system disorders
Diabetes costs $174 billion annually
Diabetes is a well-established problem and a multi-billion dollar industry. It is medically characterized by Fasting Blood Glucose higher than 126 mg/dL , which ranges between 100-125 mg/dL are considered pre-diabetic and ranges below 99 mg/dL are considered normal. Studies are finding that a fasting blood glucose below 83 mg/dL is actually a better benchmark, as risk of heart disease begins to increase at anything above that.
IMPORTANT: There is a difference between Type 1 diabetes (an autoimmune condition) and Type 2 diabetes (lifestyle related). This article refers specifically to Type 2 diabetes.
Some medical professionals use an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) to test for diabetes. If you’ve ever been pregnant and had to drink the sickeningly sweet sugar cocktail and then have blood drawn, you are familiar with this one. Basically, a patient is given 50-75 grams of glucose in concentrated solution and his blood Continue reading