Clinical Trial Finder Team
Keywords: Diabetes Symptoms, Clinical Trials on Diabetes
Quick Links:
- What is diabetes?
- Symptoms of Diabetes
- Causes of Diabetes
- Risk Factors of Diabetes
- Treatments for Diabetes
- When to see a doctor
- Prevention of Diabetes
- MedBuzz Clinical Trial Findings
What is Diabetes?
Diabetes is a serious metabolic condition that involves problems with your body’s ability to produce, regulate or recognise insulin. Insulin a hormone produced by your pancreas when you consume sugar. Its primary role is supporting the movement of glucose into cells for energy, as free glucose in the blood i.e. high blood sugar is incredibly damaging to the body. When you have diabetes, that insulin production, delivery or usage is either disrupted, unregulated or non-existent. Left untreated, high blood sugar can lead to serious damage to your eyes, kidneys, other organs and even result in amputation of damaged limbs.
There are several types of diabetes:
- Type 1: An autoimmune disease where your immune system attacks and destroys the cells in the pancreas responsible for insulin production. This type is not related to lifestyle factors, is non-preventable and has no cure. About 10% of diabetic patients have type 1.
- Type 2: A progressive condition in which the body becomes resistant to insulin, or loses the capacity to produce enough insulin in response to sugars coming in. Exactly why this happens is still unknown, but genetic and environmental factors seem to contribute e.g. low activity, overweight.
- Gestational: A condition in some pregnant women, as a result of insulin-blocking hormones causing high blood sugar or other prediabetic conditions. The condition usually goes away after their baby is born, but women who experience it during pregnancy are at higher risk of developing type 2.
You can also be classed as ‘prediabetic’ which means your blood sugar levels are high, but not high enough to be diagnosed with type 2 yet. This is usually a warning sign for anyone to look at their lifestyle and start improving their health.
Symptoms of Diabetes
The symptoms of diabetes are all quite similar, and could be warning signs that you have may have the condition or your treatment isn’t working properly. Though, these symptoms shouldn’t continue after a treatment plan has been put in place. For type 2, these symptoms can gradually come on over time, but for type 1, these symptoms often come on over the space of a few days or weeks.
Both type 1 and type 2 symptoms:
- Frequent urination
- Frequent feeling of thirst
- Increased hunger
- Fatigue
- Vission issues
- Slow healing cuts/bruises/injuries
Type 1 specific symptoms
- Weight loss
- Nausea
- Vomiting
Type 2 Specific Symptoms
- Tingling, stiffness or numbness in the hands or feet (more for type 2)
- Frequent yeast infections
- Itchy skin around the groin
- Weight gain
- Acanthosis nigricans: darkening of the skin on the neck, armpits and groin
- Impotence or erectile dysfunction
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Gestational Symptoms
- Increased thirst and urination
Causes of Diabetes
The cause of each type is varied.
Causes of Type 1
As type 1 is an autoimmune response, doctors still don’t know the trigger for it developing, but research suggests that genes might play a role, in addition to some viral responses.
There is no one gene that is turned off or on which results in type 1 developing, but in fact a few dozen. If one or more of your parents have been diagnosed with type 1, you might have a higher chance, but doctors aren’t sure how much of a higher chance that is. Like most things, your environment, family history, ethnicity and other lifestyle factors could also play a role in developing type 1.
Causes of Type 2
In type 2 diabetes, cells become resistant to the action of insulin and/or the amount of insulin needed by the pancreas becomes too much to overcome this resistance. Often this is the result of a consistent overload of glucose and in the blood, but genetic factors can also play a role. As a result, being overweight is strongly linked to the development of type 2 diabetes.
Causes of Gestational
Women who experience gestational diabetes have a high risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the future, which means that the causes of these types are very similar.
Both genes and environmental factors play a role in the development of gestational diabetes, and just because you have gestational diabetes doesn’t mean you will develop type 2 diabetes. You can support this risk by maintaining an active and healthy pregnancy and life.
Risk Factors of Diabetes
Risk Factors of Type 1
Although the cause of type 1 diabetes is still unknown, there are some risk factors that could play a part in the chance of developing the disease. These include:
- Family history: if your parent or sibling has type 1 your risk increases
- Environmental factors: exposure to viral illness is likely to play some role in developing type 1
- Geography: certain countries have higher rates of type 1
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Risk Factors of Type 2
Type 2 diabetes is often associated with excess weight and environmental factors, but researchers don’t fully understand why some people develop type 2 diabetes and others don’t. Some of the risk factors for developing type 2 diabetes include:
- Excess weight: If you’re above the healthy weight range for your age and height, you have a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The more fatty tissue you have, the more resistant your cells become to insulin.
- Low activity: Daily activity uses glucose as energy and increases sensitivity to insulin. It also helps you control the amount of fatty tissue you hold on your body.
- Genetic predisposition: A family history of type 2 diabetes will increase your chances of developing it.
- Race, ethnicity or geography: Certain people such as Black, Hispanic, American Indian and others are at higher risk of developing type 2. Additionally, people in certain countries such as Finland have a higher chance.
- Age: Older people above the age of 40 have a higher chance of developing type 2 diabetes, though cases in adolescents and children are on the rise.
- Gestational diabetes: If you experienced gestational diabetes during pregnancy, you have a higher chance of developing type 2 diabetes.
- High blood pressure and high blood sugar: Blood pressure over 140/90 is linked to an increased risk. High blood sugar can indicate you are prediabetic.
Risk Factors of Gestational
Factors which may influence the risk of developing gestational diabetes include women who:
- Experienced gestational diabetes in a previous pregnancy
- Are over the age of 40
- Have had high blood glucose levels in the past
- Have a family history of type 2 diabetes, or gestational diabetes
- Are above the healthy weight range for their age and height
- Experienced fast weight gain during the first few trimesters of their pregnancy
Treatments for Diabetes
There is currently no cure for diabetes, but with a good routine and adjusting certain habits, living with diabetes is manageable. Almost all treatments for diabetes is the manual injection or oral consumption of insulin.
Treatments for All Diabetes
One treatment in common for all types of diabetes is in relation to your environment i.e. what you eat and how active you are. Improving these factors may allow you better control over your diabetic condition. These factors are also very true for gestational diabetes. They include:
- A healthy diet: As diabetes is related to your body’s inability to produce or respond to insulin, a helpful treatment for diabetes is supporting your body’s glucose levels. This means maintaining a low sugar, highly nutritious diet with complex carbohydrates, vegetables, lean meats and healthy fats. Ketogenic, and low GI diets have shown to have some improvement in prediabetic people.
- Regular activity: The less fatty tissue your body has, the less resistant your cells could be to insulin. Regular activity to maintain a healthy weight range is a direct way to drop fat on the body, and support regular insulin levels and response.
Treatments for Type 1 & Type 2
In addition to a healthy lifestyle, those with diabetes need insulin to survive. There are also other treatments for diabetics which can help support the pancreas and body.
- Insulin: As your body is unable to produce regular levels of insulin, insulin is required for all types. There are a number of types of insulin, ranging in the speed at which they take effect and how long they last from rapid, long-lasting and options in between.
- Pancreas stimulating medication: To encourage the production and release of more insulin.
- Glucose inhibitors: Medication that inhibits the production or release of glucose from your liver, so you need less insulin the transport sugar into your cells.
- Enzyme inhibitors: Medication that stops the stomach from breaking down carbohydrates.
- Pancreas transplant: Replacing the pancreas of a diabetic with a healthy pancreas. This is a serious operation and requires life-long commitments and medication to ensure the donated organ doesn’t fail or be rejected by the body.
- Gastric bypass surgery: Some success has been seen in patients who have gastric bypass surgery to control their weight. Again this is a serious and often unsuccessful treatment of diabetes.
When to see a doctor
If you begin to experience any symptoms of diabetes, speak to your GP about testing for diabetes. Pregnant women will be routinely tested for gestational diabetes during their final trimesters, but if you feel an onset of certain symptoms, ask your GP for an early test.
Your doctor might take certain blood tests depending on your situation. Some tests include a blood glucose test after fasting, a blood glucose levels test drinking a sugary liquid and an A1C test.
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Prevention of Diabetes
Type 1 diabetes cannot be prevented, but environmental factors may play a role. Additionally, there are parts of type 2 diabetes that researchers don’t fully understand, and as a result, genetic factors may play a role.
As a result, there is no way to ensure you can prevent developing diabetes, but you can definitely support your body to reduce your risk. This includes:
- Living an active and healthy life: Maintain at least 150 minutes of exercise per week
- Cut ‘bad fats’ from your diet: such as those from frying oil and processed foods from your diet
- Limit or cut simple carbohydrates and sugars: i.e. processed breads and cereals, soda, lollies
- Fill your diet with more complex and nutritious carbohydrates: e.g. fruits, vegetables and unprocessed grains
MedBuzz Clinical Trial Findings
We do the research so you can be better informed!
Type 2 diabetes counts for 80-90% of all cases in the world, and as a result, more funding and focus of clinical trials and research is focused on this type and less on type 1. The resulting findings give an exciting insight into the management, prevention and even possible reversal of type 2 diabetes.
- Ketogenic diet: Multiple studies, researchers have defined the ketogenic diet as a possible solution to type 2.
- Intermittent fasting: Scientists discovered that in mice on an intermittent fasting diet exhibited lower fat, a suspected contributor to the development of type 2.
- Low-calorie diets: Researchers have confirmed a hypothesis in relation to low-calorie diets and reversing type 2. They found that in type 2 diabetics with excess fat in the liver as a result of a high-calorie diet, the liver responded poorly to insulin and as a result produced too much glucose. This excess fat in the liver is passed onto the pancreas which causes the insulin-producing cells to fail. When subjects lost less than 1 gram of fat from the pancreas through a low-calorie diet, it re-started the normal production of insulin, and in turn reversing type 2. This reversal remains possible for “at least 10 years after the onset of the condition”.
- Mediterranean diet: In a review of observational studies, researchers found that the adoption of a Mediterranean diet was associated with a lower risk of developing metabolic syndrome (commonly associated with diabetes), and could be proposed to prevent related conditions.
- High-fiber diet: Researchers have found in a study that when compared to those on low-fat, low-carb diets, a high fiber diet showed a greater impact in regulating the blood sugar of those with type 2. The study showed a clear association with improving type 2 with this diet.
Sources:
Diabetes.org
DiabetesAustralia
WebMd.com
HealthLine
MayoClinic.org
NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov
InsulinNation.com
