January 15, 2001
Diagnosis and Symptoms
Question from Frankfurt, Germany:
I am a 30 year old woman who is overweight, as is most of my family. My job requires me to be sedentary, but I do get a moderate amount of exercise. (Since I don’t own a car, I walk everywhere, and I swim once a week.) Two of my grandparents had diabetes, but no one in the next two generations (parents, aunts/uncles, siblings, cousins) has been diagnosed with it so far. I have read that excessive urination is a sign of diabetes. Could you please define excessive? My new roommate has commented that I use the bathroom extraordinarily frequently. Having lived alone for years, I have had no basis of comparison, but I hadn’t noticed any sudden changes. The other symptoms for diabetes (fatigue, infections, excessive thirst, weight loss, slow-healing injuries) do not sound familiar. How many symptoms should one have before getting a test?
[Note: Since I’m currently living in a foreign country, the language barrier and health insurance situation will make getting a test anything but routine, but of course I will do it if it seems that I’m at high risk.]
Answer:
The diagnosis of diabetes and/or any of other categories of glucose intolerance may quite easy: a fasting blood sugar may be often enough. Then, beyond excessive urination (average 1-1.5 liter daily) definition, I’d rather ask your doctor to check your fasting blood sugar (quite a cheap test, performed everywhere) first. In overweight type 2 diabetes symptoms of clinical diabetes (fatigue, excessive thirst and urination, weight loss) might be too late to make the diagnosis and possibly prevent chronic vascular complications.
MS
