Are you at risk for diabetes?
What is Diabetes?
Diabetes is a disease where your blood glucose levels are above normal. Food in our bodies gets turned into glucose, or sugar, which our bodies then use for energy. Our bodies make a hormone called insulin in the pancreas which helps glucose get into the cells of our bodies. A diagnosis means our bodies don’t make enough insulin or can’t use its own insulin as well as it should, which causes sugar to build up in your blood.
It can cause serious health complications including heart disease, blindness, kidney failure, and lower-extremity amputations. Since diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States, you should be aware of the symptoms.
What are the symptoms?
• Frequent urination
• Excessive thirst
• Unexplained weight loss
• Extreme hunger
• Sudden vision changes
• Tingling or numbness in hands or feet
• Long-term fatigue
• Very dry skin
• Slow to healing sores
• More infections than usual.
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The sudden onset of insulin-dependent diabetes, known as type 1 diabetes, may also include nausea, vomiting, or stomach pains accompanying some of the above symptoms.
What are the risk factors for diabetes?
Some of the risk factors for type 2 diabetes include obesity, older age, family history, prior history of gestational diabetes, physical inactivity, and race/ethnicity. There is a particularly high risk for type 2 diabetes for African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, American Indians, and some Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Gestational diabetes, which causes high blood sugar, develops during pregnancy (gestation) and is caused by increased production of hormones that make the body less able to use insulin as well as it should. Most gestational diabetes goes away shortly after birth but does put you at higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life. This type of diabetes occurs more frequently in African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, American Indians, as well as people with a family history of diabetes regardless of race. Obesity significantly increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Other types of diabetes, may be the result of surgery, drugs, malnutrition, specific genetic syndromes, infections, and other illnesses.
Surgically induced diabetes may occur when surgery is performed on the pancreas. There is a risk that the pancreas’ ability to produce insulin will change. This condition may be temporary or permanent so frequent testing of blood sugar is needed to monitor whether, or when, medications or insulin injections may be necessary.
If you think you might be at risk, then you need to visit your physician for a diagnosis.Your medical professional may prescribe Lantus Solostar for you if you have been diagnosed with diabetes. The medication Lantus Solostar is one of the most prescribed drugs for diabetes. Use our drug pricing tool to find out where to get this and other medications at the lowest price.
