Advance Comprehensive Diabetes Care
What is Comprehensive Diabetic Care and Prevention?
Diabetes is a disease that affects how your body uses glucose or blood sugar. Glucose is important because it is fuel for your brain, muscles, and cells. If you have diabetes, you have too much glucose in your body which can lead to serious health problems. Diabetes is very common disease, affecting just under 10 percent of the population. It's prevalence is becoming even more common each year.
eople of any age can be diagnosed with diabetes, and it's especially common to be diagnosed during childhood or as a senior citizen. While there is no cure for diabetes, it can be controlled allowing patients to lead full and productive lives.
- Type 1 : Children and young adults are typically diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes or juvenile diabetes. This is when your body does not make insulin. Only about 5 percent of the people who have diabetes have Type 1.
- Type 2 : Most people with diabetes have Type 2. This is when your body doesn't use insulin properly. It makes too much insulin and over time it can't make enough to keep your blood sugar levels normal.
- Gestational : This is diabetes that occurs only during pregnancy, and goes away after delivery.
- Prediabetes : This is a potentially reversible type of diabetes where your blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough to be classified as diabetes.
Complications of Diabetes
Diabetes complications are divided into microvascular (due to damage to small blood vessels) and macrovascular (due to damage to larger blood vessels). Microvascular complications include damage to eyes (retinopathy) leading to blindness, to kidneys (nephropathy) leading to renal failure and to nerves (neuropathy) leading to impotence and diabetic foot disorders (which include severe infections leading to amputation).
Macrovascular complications include cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks, strokes and insufficiency in blood flow to legs. There is evidence from large randomized-controlled trials that good metabolic control in both type 1 and 2 diabetes can delay the onset and progression of these complications.
Diabetic eye disease is a group of eye problems that can affect people with diabetes. These conditions include diabetic retinopathy, diabetic macular edema, cataracts, and glaucoma.
Over time, diabetes can cause damage to your eyes that can lead to poor vision or even blindness. But you can take steps to prevent diabetic eye disease, or keep it from getting worse, by taking care of your diabetes.
Kidneys are remarkable organs. Inside them are millions of tiny blood vessels that act as filters. Their job is to remove waste products from the blood.
Sometimes this filtering system breaks down. Diabetes can damage the kidneys and cause them to fail. Failing kidneys lose their ability to filter out waste products, resulting in kidney disease.
Diabetes causes nerve damage through different mechanisms, including direct damage by the hyperglycemia and decreased blood flow to nerves by damaging small blood vessels. This nerve damage can lead to sensory loss, damage to limbs, and impotence in diabetic men. It is the most common complication of diabetes.
Hyperglycemia damages blood vessels through a process called “atherosclerosis”, or clogging of arteries. This narrowing of arteries can lead to decreased blood flow to heart muscle (causing a heart attack), or to brain (leading to stroke), or to extremities (leading to pain and decreased healing of infections).
Thyroid Disorders
Thyroid disease is a medical condition that affects the function of the thyroid gland. The thyroid gland is located at the front of the neck and produces thyroid hormones that travel through the blood to help regulate many other organs, meaning that it is an endocrine organ. These hormones normally act in the body to regulate energy use, infant development, and childhood development.
There are five general types of thyroid disease, each with their own symptoms. A person may have one or several different types at the same time. The five groups are:
- Hypothyroidism (low function) caused by not having enough free thyroid hormones.
- Hyperthyroidism (high function) caused by having too much free thyroid hormones .
- Structural abnormalities, most commonly a goiter (enlargement of the thyroid gland).
- Tumors which can be benign (not cancerous) or cancerous.
- Abnormal thyroid function tests without any clinical symptoms (subclinical hypothyroidism or subclinical hyperthyroidism).
Metabolic Bone Disease
Metabolic Bone Disease is a term used for various conditions of the bones that can be caused by a number of different disorders. Most of these disorders are developed due to nutritional deficiencies, defects in the bone metabolism procedure or due to hereditary defects in the skeletal structure. Conditions that fall under the category are osteoporosis, osteomalacia, rickets, Paget's disease, parathyroid conditions, chemotherapy induced bone loss and menopause induced bone loss.
- Imbalance in the level of calcium: Too much calcium or too little calcium can cause bone diseases. While the overabundance of calcium (hypercalcemia) in the body will lead to calculi formation, which can be harmul for the body, the lack of calcium (hypocalcemia) causes weakness, bone pain and restricted growth.
- Deficiency of phosphorus: Low phosphorus in blood (hypophosphatemia) leads to softening of the bone tissue and bone loss. Osteomalacia is commonly caused by phosphorus deficiencies.
- Deficiency of Vitamin D: Vitamin D is essential for the body to absorb calcium. Cells called osteoblasts need vitamin D in order to absorb calcium and secrete the bone tissue proteins. A deficiency of vitamin D can lead to a number of metabolic bone diseases like rickets and osteoporosis.
Joint pain due to OA results from a breakdown of the cartilage that serves as a cushion and shock absorber for the joints. Over or under secretion of the parathyroid hormone: The parathyroid hormone (PTH) stimulates the secretion of an enzyme which converts the inactive circulatory form of vitamin D into its active usable form. The hormone can also increase the circulation of free or ionized calcium (Ca2+) which is not attached to proteins. Both underproduction and overproduction of the hormone causes skeletal problems.
- A dull, throbbing pain in the bones is the most common symptom. The pain is frequent and lasts for a long amount of time but, unlike muscular pain, the exact region of bone pain cannot be specified.
- Severe joint pains accompanied by stiffness and swelling of the joints. The patient experience pain during regular physical activities, especially during cold weather conditions.
- Frequent fractures are caused by most bone diseases because the bone mineral density decreases drastically. Severe bone injury may be caused by mild trauma.
- Defects in the bones can cause bowed out legs and a bent backbone.
- A general feeling of exhaustion is often caused by bone diseases.
- Kidney stones are an associated complication of metabolic bone diseases.
Diabetes Associated Bone & Joint Diseases
Diabetes can cause changes in your musculoskeletal system, which is the term for your muscles, bones, joints, ligaments, and tendons. These changes can cause numerous conditions that may affect your fingers, hands, wrists, shoulders, neck, spine, or feet.
Symptoms of diabetes-related musculoskeletal problems include muscle pain, joint pain or stiffness, lessened ability to move your joints, joint swelling, deformities, and a “pins and needles” sensation in the arms or legs.
Some musculoskeletal problems are unique to diabetes. Others also affect people without diabetes. For instance, diabetes can cause skin changes such as thickening, tightness, or nodules under the skin, particularly in the hands. Carpal tunnel syndrome is frequently seen in people with diabetes, as is trigger finger (a catching or locking of the fingers), although these conditions are commonly seen in people without diabetes, as well. The shoulder joint may also be affected in diabetes. And, of course, the feet are susceptible to problems caused by diabetes.
Most of these conditions can be successfully treated with anti-inflammatory medications, steroid injections, or other therapies.
- Stiffness in your hands that affects your ability to move or use them.
- Fingers get “locked” in certain positions.
- Numbness or tingling in your hands, arms, or legs.
- Stiffness or decreased motion in your shoulders.
- Muscle pain or swelling.