Diabetes
Diabetes is when your body struggles to produce or respond to insulin. This causes your blood sugar levels to rise to an unhealthy level – potentially harming your body.
What is diabetes?
- Type 1 diabetes — an autoimmune disease that’s normally identified in early childhood. It happens when your immune system attacks and damages the production site of insulin until your body can no longer make it.
- Type 2 diabetes — this is when your body doesn’t produce enough insulin or your cells become resistant to it.
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Symptoms
The signs and symptoms of diabetes can often be very subtle, meaning it can be up to 10 years before you realise you have it.
Some of the most common symptoms include:
- Extreme thirst
- Urinating more often —mainly during the night
- Extreme tiredness
- Slower healing of cuts and wounds
- Blurry vision
- Increased infections — for example, thrush
- Unexplained weight loss
Long-term symptoms
Type 2 diabetes can have some serious side effects if it’s not addressed and managed.
In the worst-case scenario, the side effects include:
- Heart disease and stroke
- Cancer
- Kidney disease
- Diabetic retinopathy – when blood sugar damages the back of your eye (retina)
- Nerve damage
Causes
Unlike type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes isn’t an autoimmune condition. It’s mostly influenced by lifestyle factors, as well as genetic factors.
You are at more risk of getting type 2 diabetes if:
- You’re over 40
- One of your family members has it
- You’re of South Asian, African Caribbean, or Black African descent
- You drink too much alcohol
- Have a sedentary lifestyle
- You have high blood pressure
- You’re overweight
Health Action Plan
I will take a look at using the functional medicine approach, using ‘food as medicine’ that may support its function deficiencies in vitamins and minerals, stress and additional laboratory tests such as blood, stool and food intolerance tests to outline any major dysfunctions in the body to get you feeling back to your old self again. I will then correct these imbalances in the body with lifestyle interventions and various nutritional and herbal supplements.