Some early indications of diabetes are:

Increased Hunger and Fatigue: Your body converts the food you eat into glucose that your cells use for energy. But your cells need insulin to take in glucose. If your body doesn’t make enough insulin or your cells are not able to use the insulin your body makes, the glucose can’t get into them, and you have no energy; this can make you hungrier and more tired than usual.

Polyuria and Increased Thirst

The average person usually has to pee between four and seven times in 24 hours, but people with diabetes may go a lot more. Why? Usually, your body reabsorbs glucose as it passes through your kidneys. But when diabetes pushes your blood sugar up, your kidneys may not be able to bring it all back. As a result, the body urinates in excess, taking fluids. The result: You’ll have frequent urination, and because of frequent urination, you can feel very thirsty.

Dry mouth and itchy skin

Because your body is using more fluids, there’s less moisture for other things. You could get dehydrated, and your mouth may feel dry. Dry skin can make you itchy.

Blurred vision, Impaired circulation, swelling and tissue damage, bleeding, clotting, etc can damage the retina of the eye causing blurred vision or in severe cases loss of vision also. Frequent change in eyesight number (refractive error) due to uncontrolled sugars also causes blurred vision.

Weight loss If your body can’t get energy from your food, it will start burning muscle and fat for energy instead. You may lose weight even though you haven’t changed how you eat (Type 1 diabetes)

Tingling, pain, or numbness in the hands/feet: Long-standing uncontrolled blood sugars can lead to nerve damage also called Neuropathy leading to these symptoms.

Early treatment of these indications can decrease the risk of further complications. Connect with our experts to know more.

There are various ways to monitor blood sugars – Glucometer, conventional blood tests, and continuous glucose monitoring. How frequently one needs to do it depends on how well managed your diabetes is, what medication you are on, especially insulin, pregnant women with diabetes, etc. Always talk to your healthcare team, they’ll give you advice on how often you should check the levels.

Glucometer is commonly used for SMBG (Self-monitoring of blood glucose), it needs needle pricks.

With a continuous glucose monitor(CGM Flash device), a painless procedure, you can check your sugars several times a day which gives insights on sugar response to various types of food you eat, physical activity, stress, medication, etc.

Blood tests like fasting and postprandial sugars, and HbA1C are traditional ways of sugar testing.HbA1C gives us average blood sugar readings for the last 3 months.

High blood sugar levels increase your risk of developing severe complications. However you manage your diabetes, stay in the know about your blood sugar levels.

Regular testing will help you track your health and help distance long-term health problems such as:

• Heart diseases
• Stroke
• Kidney problems
• High cholesterol and high blood pressure
• Keeping blood sugars under control helps to prevent or delay the onset of complications.

Type 2 diabetes is manageable and, in some cases, reversed. Most treatment plans will include Screening/ monitoring blood sugars, awareness and education about diabetes and related complications, managing diet, improving physical activity, managing stress, etc.

The goal should be to keep blood sugars under control with as minimal medications as possible.

Additional lifestyle changes to help treat your type 2 diabetes include:

• Eating foods rich in fiber and healthy carbohydrates — eating fruits, vegetables, and whole grains can help keep your blood glucose levels steady
• Learning to listen to your body and learn to stop eating when you’re full
• Manage your weight and keep your heart healthy, which typically means keeping refined carbohydrates, sweets, and animal fats to a minimum
• Get about half an hour of physical activity daily to keep your heart healthy — exercise can help to maintain blood glucose, too.
• Quit smoking and control alcohol consumption.

Glucose serves as fodder for your body cells. It needs a key called insulin to be absorbed by these cells.

The C-peptide test often helps differentiate between type 1 and type 2 diabetes. With type 1 diabetes, your pancreas makes little to no insulin and little or no C-peptide. With type 2 diabetes, the body produces insulin but doesn’t use it well, causing C-peptide levels to be higher than usual.

Blood tests used to diagnose type 1 and type 2 diabetes include fasting blood sugar, hemoglobin A1C, and glucose tolerance tests. The A1C test measures the average blood sugar level over the past three months. The glucose tolerance test measures blood sugar after a sugary drink.

In type I diabetes, people are always dependent on insulin to manage their blood sugars but in Type 2 diabetes, blood sugars can be managed with oral medication with or without insulin.

Diet, exercise, and lifestyle modification are bases for diabetes management be it type 1 or type 2.