Don’t ignore these diabetes symptoms

People living with diabetes learn to manage their disease with proper diet, regular exercise and medication. Success is measured by how well you can control your blood sugar. 

However, many factors can affect blood sugar besides diet and activity. Illness, stress, social drinking and women’s menstrual cycles can all influence blood sugar levels and upset your normal routine. 

If you have diabetes, you may know these factors and make adjustments accordingly. However, some symptoms are always reasons to seek medical advice, whether it’s a call to your GP or a trip to accident & emergency. 

“Truthfully, with the ability of people to test their blood sugar at home, we can treat many more things at home than we used to be able to,” says diabetes expert Dr Andrew Drexler. 

This does not mean you should problem solve without your GP’s help, he adds, but rather, that you might be able to substitute a phone call for a trip to a hospital’s emergency department.    

Here are the diabetes symptoms you should never ignore. 

Frequent urination, extreme thirst or hunger, or blurry vision

These are three common warning signs of uncontrolled blood sugar.

With any of these symptoms, you should test your blood sugar and seek medical advice. Depending on how high your blood sugar is, medication may fix the problem or you may have to seek medical care to replace fluids and electrolytes and to get blood sugar back under control. 

If left unchecked, high blood sugar can lead to serious, life-threatening conditions.  Type 1 diabetes patients can develop diabetic ketoacidosis, which happens when the body starts breaking down fats instead of sugars and a dangerous build-up of ketones (by-products of fat metabolism) occurs.

In type 2 diabetes patients, hyperosmolar coma can occur. “It’s essentially uncontrolled diabetes, which leads to dehydration and altered consciousness and which could be fatal if untreated,” says endocrinologist Dr Adrian Vella. 

Acting drunk

Strange behaviour can also signal low blood sugar. This can happen when a person’s medication works too well and overshoots the target. 

Drinking some juice or eating a snack usually is enough to raise sugar levels and normalise behaviour. Often, however, the diabetic patient is not in the state of mind to recognise that something is wrong. If no one else is around to prompt you, your blood sugar may sink low enough to cause you to lose consciousness. 

Most of the time, patients will recover on their own, but if they are taking certain medications, emergency medical treatment may be required. 

“If it’s either a long-acting pill that can cause hypoglycaemia,” such as the sulphonylurea medications, “or a long-acting insulin that can cause hypoglycaemia, then it very well may be necessary to go to the emergency room,” Drexler says.