Could I be diabetic?

There are two types of diabetes; type I and type II. Type I diabetes occurs at a very young age if your body is unable to produce insulin, but you may only get your first diabetic symptoms after an illness (although this generally still occurs in childhood).  If you are young and have noticed that you have to urinate more often, you are feeling very thirsty with an extremely dry mouth, you have recently lost weight and you are feeling tired with possibly blurred vision then you might have diabetes type I.  Type II diabetes develops over time if your body becomes resistant to the insulin that it produces. If you are overweight and exercise infrequently then you have a higher risk of developing type II diabetes.  If you have started to notice that any sores or cuts that you have taken a long time to heal or that you have frequent yeast infections or itchy skin along with an increased need to urinate and a feeling or thirst and dry mouth, then you may have developed diabetes type II. If you are concerned that you have diabetes then it is important that you talk to your GP sooner rather than later. Whilst there are numerous ways of testing for diabetes (such as sugar measuring devices available from pharmacy’s) these can be unreliable and will not give you the immediate advice that you would get from your GP if they diagnosed you with type I or type II diabetes. Uncontrolled diabetes will cause the amount of sugar in your blood to become very high which increases your risk of heart failure and stroke and can also lead to diabetic coma.

What are normal blood glucose levels? »