thishereboi
Posts: 14463
Joined: 6/19/2008 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: OvrThRainbow quote:
ORIGINAL: haidara doctor here. first off let me say, its great that you're curious about your health! its so sad when people take medications and they dont understand their disease pathophysiology. you have the classic signs of diabetes. There's type 1 and type 2, which are different in cause and approach. Thats a whole other discussion. let me answer these questions directly for you: 1) The body's "gasoline" is sugar. we doctors call sugar "glucose" but for all intensive purposes you can think of glucose as sugar you put in your coffee. basically the same stuff as far as you need to know. You need it to run your body. But you are a diabetic. your problem is your blood has plenty of sugar, but your cells cant bring it in. so it just floats around in your blood causing all kinds of problems. sugar is toxic to your vessels when it floats around like that not being used. 2) clammy and chills: can be your body's poor regulation of glucose levels, either high blood sugar or low blood sugar. Depends on what kind of diabetic you are and whether you have been prescribed insulin or not yet. It's complicated, but I'll give one possible scenario: the basic mechanism is the release of epinephrine in your body to try to get more sugar into your cells. this is because your cells are starved for sugar. if a normal person doesnt eat for a long time, they would get the same symptoms. as a diabetic, even though you just had a big dinner, and your blood has tons of sugar in it, your cells don't sense that, so they think you're starving. your sympathetic nervous system (releases epinephrine in an effort to get more sugar/glucose into your cells) goes into overdrive and you start to feel clammy and get chills, which are actually the signs of LOW blood sugar. quite the paradox right? 3) whew. okay. you mentioned you had recurrent infections. classic diabetes. why? because high blood sugar decreases your body's ability to fight off bugs like bacteria and fungi. your white blood cells (soldiers in your body patrolling in your vessels) dont work as well when there is a ton of sugar in your blood. you can get overwhelming infections (sepsis) and die if you dont treat diabetes. 4) poor eyesight. this is due to something called diabetic retinopathy. basically, the tiny vessels in your eyes get damaged by sugar. why? because sugar sticks to your blood vessels and damages them. 5) drinking and peeing a lot. okay this is due to kidney dysfunction and the principles of osmosis. ever did the science experiment where you put a a special "semi-permeable" balloon filled with tap water and put it in salt water? and the balloon shrinks? no? well take my word for it. thats exactly what will happen. your kidneys filter all your blood and make pee. normal people can extract all the sugar out of your pee and put it back in your blood. but for a diabetic, the sugar damages the kidney filter and with the high concentration of sugar, it leaks out into the urine. what happens next? water from your body gets sucked out into your pee due to osmosis. basically your body is the baloon and it is shrinking and shriveling because the sugar pulls all your water out into pee. so you pee a ton. and you get thirsty. so you drink a ton to make up for it. its a very bad and wasteful process that makes your body very tired, wasting energy. 6) weight loss. this one is interesting. there is another source of energy besides sugar. they are called ketone bodies from fats. your heart and other tissues can use them in stressful emergencies (starvation). so your body begins to break down fats instead of using sugar like it normally is supposed to. so you lose weight when you really shouldnt be. here my advice. get the bloodwork done. see a doctor. figure out whether you have type 1 or type 2 diabetes. you may very well need to take insulin shots if you are type 1. You may also need it with type 2 depending on how bad it is, but there are medications and diet and exercise can help in this case. type 2 tends to be more hereditary. type 1 has some genetic risk factors but tends to be more sporadic. okay my hands are tired. good night! You're a highly educated person and you don't know that the phrase is "for all intents and purposes"?? Carry on. Actually since they are doling out medical advice I would be more concerned that they seem to feel there is a real chance this is dm1 as opposed to dm2.
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"Sweetie, you're wasting your gum" .. Albert This here is the boi formerly known as orfunboi
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