• Question: what are the symptons of diabetes?

    Asked by jessicawoolley to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 14 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Catherine Rix

      Catherine Rix answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Diabetes is a disease where your body can’t control the levels of sugar in your blood very well. This happens when your body can’t produce the right amount of a chemical called insulin. Insulin is produced in your pancreas and you need to it let the sugar in your blood get into your cells. Having diabetes can make you feel very tired because your cells aren’t getting enough energy and you can start to loose weight. It also makes you want to wee a lot as your body tries to get rid of all the extra glucose that is building up in your blood stream. There are two types of diabetes and how you treat it depends on which type you have. It can be controlled by taking insulin in the form of an injection or a tablet before you eat, or sometimes it can be controlled by being careful about what you eat.

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      That’s definitely a question worth asking your GP. I have been told that lots of people might have undiagnosed diabetes, so it’s worth bringing it up to check.

    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      My dad was diagnosed with diabetes recently. The worst symptom was that he would get tired really easily, but now he has been diagnosed he is managing it with diet and medication which means he’s a lot more perky!

      Diabetes can vary in severity though, all the way from feeling a bit tired to going into seizures.

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      One of my friends was recently diagnosed with diabetes, and she has to carry around insulin all the time, and time her injections really carefully.

      The three main symptoms are, needing to wee a lot, feeling thirsty a lot, and feeling hungry a lot. Because these are quite normalish things that don’t interrupt your life much, diabetes can often go undiagnosed. If you’re worried, you should talk to your doctor.

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