Type 2 diabetes: what it is, symptoms, causes and treatment

Type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease characterized by the body's resistance to insulin and increased blood sugar levels, causing symptoms such as a feeling of dry mouth, increased urge to urinate, increased desire to drink water and excessive tiredness.

Unlike type 1 diabetes, a person is not born with type 2 diabetes, developing the disease due to several years of unhealthy lifestyle habits, especially excessive consumption of carbohydrates in their diet and a sedentary lifestyle.

Depending on the degree of change in sugar levels, treatment may simply involve making some changes to your diet and lifestyle, or it may include the use of medications, such as oral antidiabetics or insulin, which should always be prescribed by a doctor. Diabetes has no cure, but it is a disease that, with control, can prevent complications.

Main symptoms

The main symptoms of type 2 diabetes are:

1. Excessive thirst;
2. Dry mouth;
3. Excessive tiredness;
4. Blurred or blurred vision;
5. Tingling in the feet or hands;
6. Frequent urge to urinate;
7. Urinary tract infection and/or candidiasis frequently;
8. Wounds that take time to heal.

Sometimes these symptoms can be difficult to identify and, therefore, one of the best ways to check the possibility of having diabetes is to have regular blood tests to assess blood sugar levels, especially when fasting.

Online symptom test

If you think you may have type 2 diabetes, select what you are feeling and find out your risk of having the disease:

The symptom test is only a guidance tool and does not serve as a diagnosis or replace consultation with an endocrinologist or general practitioner.

Causes of type 2 diabetes

The causes of type 2 diabetes are not yet fully known, however the development of this type of diabetes is influenced by a set of factors, the main ones being:

• Overweight;
• Sedentary lifestyle;
• Unhealthy eating, especially rich in carbohydrates, sugar and fat;
• Smoking;
• Accumulation of fat in the abdominal region.

Furthermore, type 2 diabetes can also occur more easily in people over 45 years of age, who use corticosteroids, who have high blood pressure, women who have polycystic ovarian syndrome, and people with a family history of diabetes.

Thus, due to the presence of a set of factors, it is possible that the pancreas reduces insulin production over time, resulting in higher blood glucose levels and favoring the development of the disease.

How the diagnosis is made

The diagnosis of type 2 diabetes mellitus is made through a blood or urine test, which assesses the level of glucose in the body. This test is usually done on an empty stomach and must be performed on 2 different days to compare the results.

Fasting glucose reference values ​​are up to 99 mg/dL in the blood. When a person has fasting glucose values ​​between 100 and 125 mg/dL, they are diagnosed with pre-diabetes and when they have fasting glucose levels above 126 mg/dL they may have diabetes. Find out more about the results of glucose tests.

Blood glucose calculator

To find out if the blood glucose test result could be indicative of diabetes, enter the value obtained in the following calculator:

How the treatment is carried out

The first way to treat type 2 diabetes is to adopt a balanced diet with less sugar and other forms of carbohydrates. Furthermore, it is also important to exercise at least 3 times a week and lose weight for overweight and obese people.

After these guidelines, if your sugar levels are not regularized, your doctor may advise the use of oral antidiabetics, which are tablets that help control blood sugar levels. See in more detail how type 2 diabetes is treated.

The use of insulin is the treatment option for people who cannot keep their glucose level controlled using oral medications alone or who cannot use antidiabetics due to other health problems, such as people who have kidney failure and do not they can use metformin, for example.

Possible consequences of type 2 diabetes

When diabetes treatment is not started in time, the disease can cause various complications in the body, related to the accumulation of sugar in various types of tissues. Some of the most common include:

• Serious vision changes that can lead to blindness;
• Poor wound healing that can lead to necrosis and limb amputation;
• Dysfunctions in the central nervous system;
• Dysfunctions in blood circulation;
• Cardiac complications and coma.

Although these complications are more frequent in people who do not start the treatment recommended by their doctor, they can also happen in people who are taking the treatment but not in the recommended way, which can continue to negatively affect glucose levels and the amount of insulin produced in the body. .