Live Life Team
Tests for diabetes are usually carried out when doctors see two or more symptoms together that can’t easily be explained by other things. These are the five most common symptoms.
You feel thirsty all the time. When your blood glucose level is too high, your body responds by trying to trying to dilute your blood and flush excess sugars out of your system. Your kidneys start working overtime and you feel continually thirsty. This may be mild and mean that you gradually increase your day to day fluid intake without really noticing, or it may be acute to the point where you feel an urgent need to drink more. Giving in to acute thirst can be dangerous, however, putting you at risk of kidney damage and stroke.
You need to urinate frequently. What goes in must come out, and when your body wants to expel sugars, the easiest way to do it is through urine. Often people with these diabetes symptoms notice that they are going to the toilet more before they realise that they’re drinking more. You may wake up in the night needing to urinate, or feel a stronger than usual urge first thing in the morning. It’s important for your health that you don’t make a habit of trying to hold it in, but you should talk to your doctor about it.
You feel exhausted a lot. Having diabetes means that your body stops managing its energy levels efficiently and tries to take energy from the wrong places. The result is that you can feel re4ally fatigued even when you’ve had plenty of sleep. This isn’t like the tiredness that you feel after exercise and you may still be able to summon up bursts of energy when needed. It’s more like the tiredness you feel when you have a persistent cold. If you are diagnosed with diabetes and begin treatment, you could get much of your energy back again.
Your vision is blurry. Often diabetes symptoms are first diagnosed by opticians during routine eye tests or because people seek help when they start having blurry vision. This can happen when diabetes causes fluid to leak into the eye. You may see wavy lines or floating dots. You may also experience difficulty in focusing at times when your blood glucose levels drop down lower than they should be. It’s important to get help with this quickly because if it’s left untreated it can cause lasting eye damage.
Cuts take a long time to heal. When diabetes has been untreated for some time, it can cause circulation problems, which means that blood doesn’t move around your body as efficiently. This means that cuts may not get all the materials they need for normal healing. When white blood cells struggle to get to where they’re needed, cuts can become infected and ulcers can form. If you develop these diabetes symptoms you will need to get specialist advice on managing them so that they don’t turn into serious wounds.
