Symptoms of diabetes, affecting both children and adults in various ways, are vital to recognise early as the condition can lead to serious long-term health issues if it goes untreated. Coinciding with World Diabetes Day on November 14, there’s no better time to become familiar with the potential signs of this illness.
Nurse and educator Carolyn Byrd took to TikTok under her handle @carolynbyrd05, urging people to “see your doctor” if they display any symptoms. Such signs often sneak up gradually, making it easy to miss them without due vigilance.
Carolyn highlighted a Diabetes Council chart, covering signs of hyperglycaemia – also known as high blood sugar – which mainly affects people with diabetes and can be serious if left untreated. ‘Extreme’ thirst stands out as a common symptom, also recognised by the NHS as a prevalent sign of diabetes.
Diabetes makes it difficult to control the level of sugar (glucose) in the blood, which can mean your kidneys need to produce more urine to help pass it out of your body. This could make you need the toilet more than usual, because your brain is telling you to drink more to make up for the urine you’ve lost, the NHS warns.
Although the lead-up to Christmas can be a stressful time, it’s important to not shrug off any symptoms you might experience. If you’re finding yourself more thirsty than normal while doing your Christmas shopping, or while making Christmas dinner, it could be a sign of diabetes or something else. That being said, it’s important to note feeling more thirsty than usual doesn’t necessarily mean you have diabetes. But it’s a good indicator that you should speak to your GP, who will carry out a test to see if you have diabetes.
Other symptoms, also shared by the Diabetes Council, include the need to urinate often, dry skin, hunger, blurry vision, drowsiness and slow-healing wounds.
According to the NHS, you should see a GP as soon as possible if you have any of the following symptoms:
- feeling very thirsty
- peeing more frequently than usual, particularly at night
- feeling very tired
- weight loss and loss of muscle bulk
- itching around the penis or vagina, or frequent episodes of thrush
- blurred vision