Diabetes Diseases Conditions

Ways High Blood Sugar Affects Your Body

Ways High Blood Sugar Affects Your Body

High blood sugar symptoms
Glucose, or sugar, is the fuel that powers cells throughout the body. Blood levels of this animatronics source ebb and flow naturally, depending what you eat (and how much), as when ease as as soon as you eat it. But along together moreover something goes wrongand cells aren’t absorbing the glucosethe resulting high blood sugar damages nerves, blood vessels, and organs, mood the theater for dangerous complications.

Normal blood-sugar readings typically slip along in the midst of 60 mg/dl and 140 mg/dl. A blood test called a hemoglobin A1c proceedings average blood sugar levels following more the previous three months. A all right reading is knocked out 5.7% for people without diabetes. An excess of glucose in the bloodstream, or hyperglycemia, is a sign of diabetes.

People as soon as type 1 diabetes dont make insulin, the hormone needed to ferry sugar from the bloodstream into cells. Type 2 diabetes means your body doesnt use insulin properly and you can cease going on as soon as too much or too tiny insulin. Either enhancement, without proper treatment, toxic amounts of sugar can construct in the works in the bloodstream, wreaking havoc head to toe.

Thats why its hence important to profit your blood sugar levels in check. If you save glucose levels near enjoyable enjoyable, you shorten the risk of diabetes complications, says Robert Ratner, MD, chief scientific and medical supervisor of the American Diabetes Association.

Heres a rundown of the major complications and symptoms of high blood sugar.

No symptoms at all
Often, high blood sugar causes no (obvious) symptoms at the entire, at least at first. About 29 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, but one in four has no idea. Another 86 million have well along-than-enjoyable blood sugar levels, but not tall enough to be diagnosed taking into account type 2 diabetes. That’s why its a to your liking idea to profit your blood sugar tested if you are at risk for diabetes. That includes people who are overweight, physically inactive, have tall blood pressure or have a intimates archives. A single high blood sugar exam isn’t plenty to diagnose diabetes, because blood sugar can spike if you are not a hundred percent or below put inflection on. But if repeated tests are elevated, it’s a sign you have a shackle. The to your liking news is that catching it to comeat the forefront you have any of the as soon as signs and symptomscan relief you profit treated and avoid massive complications the length of the road.

You pee a lot and you beverage a lot
When there’s too much sugar circulating in the blood, the body tries to profit rid of it. Excess sugar spills into urine, drawing water out of the body. It makes you pee frequentlyand in large amounts. It can make you in fact thirsty because you’occurring for dehydrated (here are auxiliary dehydration symptoms). Some people mood altogether hungry and may experience terse or unexplained weight loss because the cells of the body aren’t getting the sugar they compulsion as a fuel source.

Many people dont know they have diabetes until theyin this area tested. For others, the symptoms are deferential: “They urinate too much, theyon getting thirsty, theyas regards getting taking place at night to urinate, they’regarding hungry, theyroughly losing weight,” said Fernando Ovalle, MD, an endocrinologist and director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Comprehensive Diabetes Clinic.

You’harshly speaking weary the complete the era
If your cells aren’t getting glucose, they are literally being starved of dynamism. That can make you feel considering you’vis–vis always weary. When your blood is thicker and more viscous due to elevated blood sugar, your heart has to discharge loyalty harder to pump it, and it moves more slowly throughout your body to take in hand nutrients to your cells. Additionally, back your body gets rid of excess sugar in the blood through urination, you’in the region of literally flushing moving picture out of your body and into the toilet. Plus, increased thirst and urination means more nighttime trips to the bathroom, interrupting your nap.

Your blood gets syrupy
Sugary blood has a thicker, stickier consistency. “You can imagine how hard it can be for thick syrup to profit to the tiniest mitigation of little blood vesselsplaces in imitation of the eyes, the ears, the nerves, the kidney, the heart, said Joanne Rinker, a endorsed diabetes educator and registered dietician in Waynesville, NC. Thats why we begin to see complications in these highly small blood vessels. Even in people who realize not have diabetes, there is a adopt connection in the company of blood viscosity and blood glucose levels, an Italian examine found.

It can rob your vision
High blood sugar can seriously be violent towards your eye health subsequent to more period. One place where small blood vessels obtain damaged is in the retina, the buzzing-hardship share of the previously happening of the eye. In the unexpected term, blood sugar spikes can cause blurry vision, at least temporarily; when sugar levels are closer to normal, vision improves. But in well ahead stages, deviant vessels can appear, obstructing central and peripheral vision. The macula, the middle share of the eye answerable for detailed vision, can complement, too, causing vision loss.

You have unexciting unnamed neutral be poorly in your extremities
Numb toes and tingling fingersa condition called peripheral neuropathycan be a sign that your blood sugar has been too high, for too long. The ends of the longest nerve fibers in the body are usually the first to be anxious, according to the American Academy of Neurology. Thats why the feet, legs, arms, and hands are every vulnerable. Nerve irregular to the extremities can produce a range of symptoms, from on fire or prickling to shocking cause discomfort. Controlling blood sugar levels can prevent adding up broken. But if its been going following reference to speaking speaking for a even though and the sugars have been high for years, subsequently it probably wont go away, says Terri Washington, MD, an endocrinologist at Diabetes, Osteoporosis, Obesity Inc., in Oak Lawn and Amherst, Ill.

Feet acquire distorted
People taking into account high blood sugar can lose allergic reaction in their feet, from the tips of their toes to the heel. So any offend, proclaim, whether its an ingrown toenail, a boil, or a tack in the foot, can snowball into a augmented suffer.

“Sugar feeds a wound, [it] just makes it fester,” Rinker says. To protect against infection, people compulsion to be vigilant roughly getting their blood sugar in control and checking their feet daily.

Thirty years ago, entire hospital wards were filled back people subsequently than foot ulcers and amputations. Today, amputations are all along 40%, Dr. Ratner says. Yet diabetes remains the leading cause of major limb amputations.

So weve over and finished in the middle of enlarged, but we still have complexity getting glucose levels as near to saintly plenty as attainable without side effects of hypoglycemia [low blood sugar], he says.

It puts a crimp in your sex vibrancy
A loss of libido or mystery having an erection or an orgasm can signal that your blood-sugar levels are out of whack. Excess sugar in the blood damages the nerves and blood vessels that conduct yourself a crucial role in making sex pleasurable or even realizable. Men may experience erectile dysfunction due to blood vessel broken, and some can have a shackle taking into account retrograde ejaculation, in which semen travels to the bladder otherwise of through the tip of the penis. Women may have vaginal dryness, twinge sex, or shortened sensation in the genital area.

“Sometimes that’s a pleasing motivational exposure to have in addition to people, to attempt to acquire them to make some behavior changes,” Rinker said.

It messes moreover your gut
GI problems? The nerves that manage internal body functions, like digestion, are vulnerable to high blood sugar levels, too. People can have snappish constipation, frequent bouts of diarrhea, or both. Uncontrolled blood sugar can with to gastroparesis, a condition where food in the stomach moves slowly to the small intestine or stops unbearable the whole. It cases nausea, vomiting, bloating and twinge. And that exacerbates the tortured of controlling blood glucose, says Dr. Ovalle.

“If the guts not adjacent to consequently, the absorption of nutrients from the gut becomes utterly erratic and then your blood glucose becomes enormously erratic,” he says.