How Diabetes Results in Nerve Damage
How Diabetes Results in Nerve Damage
While diabetes undeniably comes with a variety of unfortunate side effects and symptoms, many are less severe than others. For example, you might have to change your eating habits or start exercising more.
More often than not, these are simply inconveniences, and don’t actually pose any serious threat. However, there are a few symptoms which do pose very real threats, and one of the more dangerous ones is nerve damage.
Also known as neuropathy, nerve damage occurs when the high levels of sugar in your blood damage the blood vessels running through your nerves, sometimes damaging them beyond repair and rendering them useless.
This can lead to many severe issues, from feet needing to be amputated from infections to permanent loss of vision. When you first begin to develop nerve damage, the first thing you’ll probably notice is a tingling sensation, especially in your feet, and numbness in that area.
These are only the signs of early stage nerve damage, so you don’t need to get too concerned just yet. However, this should also be a bit of a wake-up call that you need to get your diabetes under control by getting in contact with your doctor.
The levels of severity of nerve damage varies heavily, however. In most cases, the nerve damage is negligible, showing no actual signs of damage through symptoms. Others may experience very minor symptoms, but nothing too crazy or dangerous.
However, some do experience very severe symptoms with nerve damage, and these symptoms can even be fatal. On the bright side, there are ways to minimize or prevent nerve damage in most cases.
A recent study has shown that by simply keeping your blood sugar in a normal range, your chances of developing any form of serious nerve damage decrease drastically. This means you’ll have to monitor your blood sugar levels regularly, administer insulin, and stick to a diabetes-friendly diet.
If you get your blood sugar levels to normal and you still continue to see signs of nerve damage, then it’s probably about time to get your doctor involved. Unfortunately, it is possible that you can still show signs of nerve damage no matter what you do individually.
Instead, it may require the intervention of a doctor. However, this kind of situation is the absolute worst case scenario and is very rare. In most cases of nerve damage, you’ll only experience light damage that can be stopped with a few basic lifestyle changes.
