Since our discussion this past week primarily focused on Type 2 Diabetes and its symptoms, I thought it would be enlightening to dive into a symptom of Type 1.
During my later years of middle school, I noticed an overweight friend constantly reaching for water. It came to the point where he even started to bring his own water bottle from home just so he could continuously have a drink. Soon enough, he was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, and at that naive point in my life I was only told that the symptom his family caught onto was him drinking so much water.
So why was he drinking so much water? Diabetes (Type 1) is a disease where the blood in our body has too much glucose. Insulin is a hormone produced by beta cells found in the pancreas and has a duty to move glucose into the various cells in the body. In this case, someone with diabetes does not produce enough insulin to remove a lot of the excess glucose. Where the thirst for water comes into play is due to the kidneys having to work hard at filtering and absorbing all of this extra glucose. A lot of the time your kidneys cannot keep up with the large quantities of glucose, so it is removed from your body through (continuous) urination, which of course is going to leave you dehydrated. This is the reason for my friend's need for large quantities of water.
References:
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetes/in-depth/diabetes-symptoms/art-20044248#
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000305.htm
I thought this was really interesting. When I shadowed a doctor in a clinic over summer, we met with a pharmaceutical sales representative who was introducing a new drug for Type 2 Diabetes. The purpose of the drug was to essentially urinate out the extra glucose in the body. Knowing that frequent urination for both Type 1 and Type 2 is already a symptom makes me wonder if this new drug is really that beneficial and if so how much are these patients going to be drinking obscene amounts of water and how frequently urination is occurring.
ReplyDeleteAnother fun note on this symptom: their urine often smells fruity! This is due to the glucose present in high levels in their urine. Urinalysis can be very informative for diagnosing diabetes as there are other characteristic components you can expect to see. These include byproducts (like ketones) of metabolic systems that are being overused to compensate for the lack of glucose within their cells. The full name diabetes mellitus was first used after this sweetness of urine and blood was rediscovered in 1675.
ReplyDeleteFor more history on diabetes: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11953758
I did a little more research and found that diabetes is one of the leading causes of kidney failure due to all the extra work the kidneys have to do. High levels of filtration causes stress on the kidneys and about 44% of all new cases are linked to diabetes. Even among people who have their blood sugar under control have increased risk of kidney disease.
ReplyDeletehttp://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/kudiseases/pubs/kdd/