Diabetes

Here are symptoms, type, effects, and Treatments of Diabetes

Hi, to all the viewers. I am Dr. Hardik Thakker, an M. D. physician practicing from Mumbai. I would like to take this opportunity to talk about diabetes mellitus, As you all know, diabetes is a very common lifestyle disorder that we see in India. In fact, 7.1% of the adult Indian population is afflicted by this disease. If you go by world ranking, India ranks 1 as per the total number of diabetic patients in India followed by China and the United States. So this number by itself shows the burden of the disease.

Now, what I commonly see in our practice is there are a lot of newly diagnosed patients who do not have any symptoms but they have just done a random sugar check and are diagnosed to have diabetes. So the moral of the story is that one does not need to have symptoms. Typically, a diabetic would have a history of increased urination, increase of water intake, weight gain or weight loss. Sometimes, they may develop complications like eye issues, peripheral neuropathy which is tingling and numbness in the nerves and sometimes they come with foot ulcers but a majority of the patients are asymptomatic. So, a sincere request to all the viewers to have your sugars checked once a year at least just to be sure that you are not missing out on your own disease.

Now, I am going to speak about the types of diabetes, why does it happen and what are the things that happen in diabetes. There is Type 1 diabetes which is found in people less than 20 years of age, and then there is autoimmune destruction of the pancreas because of which the secretion of insulin is not there and hence the sugars are high. These patients need only insulin and there are no medications for them. The second and the most common type is Type 2 diabetes which you will find in people above 40 years of age. The typical age in Mumbai or in India for that matter is 42 years which is the age of presentation and they usually treated with medications and sometimes with add-on insulin.

There is a third uncommon variant called the MODY which is Mode Dematurity Onset Diabetes which also needs insulin and it has some autoimmune disorders and genetic predispositions. In diabetes, there are sugars present in the blood in very high amounts which damages a lot of your organs. For example, the most common organ is the nerve. So it leads to neuropathy, people get tingling and numbness in the nerves. Also, another most common organ is the heart. Diabetes can cause blockages in the heart which leads to heart attack. The third common is the eye, specially the retina. It causes retinopathy and people have decreased vision and sometimes they see floaters in the eyes.

Fourth, most common complication is the foot ulcer. We do not want people to have these complications and hence the reason to diagnose and treat early and eat right. With regard to lifestyle management, I would sincerely request diabetic patients to have a brisk walk for 30 minutes every day. This by itself will increase your insulin sensitivity and help you to decrease the dose. Second thing is eating healthy which makes a huge difference to your sugar levels, to have a very low calorie meal, specifically avoid sugars and exercise. So, that is all I would like to say on diabetes.

If you wish to contact me further or would like to consult with me in private, I would request you to go to my website which is www.drhardikthakker.com and you can even get in touch with me through lybrate.com. Thank you very much for your time.