Diabetes

What is diabetes?

Diabetes develops as a result of your body having problems making or using the hormone insulin. As well as causing chronically poor health, diabetes is potentially life-threatening.

Insulin plays a vital role in regulating blood sugar. Some people have an autoimmune condition, so their bodies can’t make insulin and can’t regulate their blood sugar. This causes type 1 diabetes, which typically starts at an early age and isn’t preventable.

Type 2 diabetes, on the other hand, more often develops in older people. Being overweight, or obese, is the key factor rather than age. 

If you have type 2 diabetes, your body doesn’t produce a sufficient quantity of insulin or doesn’t properly use the insulin it makes. Unlike type 1 diabetes, type 2 is preventable.

What are the symptoms of diabetes?

Symptoms usually appear quite suddenly in people with Type 1 diabetes, whereas with type 2 diabetes, symptoms develop more slowly, with only a few at first. Typical symptoms include:

• Increased thirst
• Needing to urinate often
• Constant hunger
• Mood changes
• Fatigue and weakness
• Blurred vision

With type 2 diabetes, the symptoms you do notice can be easily attributable to other causes such as aging or overwork, so by the time you start to notice more worrying signs like blurred vision and constant thirst, the condition is likely at an irreversible stage.

However, before you reach this stage, your body enters a state known as pre-diabetes. This means that your blood sugar levels are higher than they should be, but you can still reverse the process. 

The team at Dallas Family Medicine identifies patients who are close to being or are pre-diabetic using a simple screening test. 

How is diabetes treated?

Treatment depends on the type of diabetes you have. Patients with type 1 diabetes need insulin therapy for life, and some patients with type 2 diabetes also need to take insulin. 

The team at Dallas Family Medicine can help you make changes to improve your health and reduce the severity of your diabetes. Changes to make include:

• Losing excess weight
• Eating a healthy, balanced diet
• Quitting smoking
• Minimizing alcohol intake
• Engaging in regular exercise

Addressing the lifestyle issues that cause Type 2 diabetes is vital, both to reduce the impact on your general health and to help prevent some of the more serious effects of diabetes, such as nerve damage and loss of sight.

Dallas Family Medicine takes a patient-centered approach to care and can help assess both pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical approaches to dealing with diabetes or pre-diabetes symptoms. To arrange your diabetic screening test, call the office today or book online.