Excessive thirst and increased urination are common diabetes signs and symptoms.
When you have diabetes, excess glucose — a type of sugar — builds up in your blood.
Your kidneys are forced to work overtime to filter and absorb the excess glucose.
When your kidneys can’t keep up, the excess glucose is excreted into your urine, dragging along fluids from your tissues, which makes you dehydrated.
This will usually leave you feeling thirsty. As you drink more fluids to quench your thirst, you’ll urinate even more.
You develop urinary tract, yeast, or vaginal infections frequently.
Sometimes, OB-GYNs help to diagnose diabetes based on an increased frequency of UTI infections or yeast infections.
Diabetes causes changes to the body’s immune system that can increase your risk of developing other infections.
Irregular menstrual cycles or miscarriages can also be signs of diabetes.
You experience occasional blurred vision.
Uncontrolled diabetes can lead to a condition called diabetic retinopathy, which affects your vision.
High levels of blood glucose pull fluid from your tissues, including the lenses of your eyes.
This affects your ability to focus.
Eye doctors sometimes play a role in helping to diagnose diabetes because of the visual symptoms that can arise.
Left untreated, diabetes can cause new blood vessels to form in your retina — the back part of your eye — and damage established vessels.
For most people, these early changes don’t cause vision problems.
However, if these changes progress undetected, they can lead to vision loss and blindness.
Slow-healing sores or frequent infections
High levels of blood glucose can lead to poor blood flow and impair your body’s natural healing process.
Because of this, people with diabetes may notice slow-healing sores, especially on the feet.
In women with diabetes, bladder and vaginal yeast infections may occur more often.
You experience unintentional weight loss.
While many people want to lose weight, the weight loss that occurs when you have uncontrolled diabetes is not a healthy way to lose weight.
It happens because your body can’t properly use insulin to help process glucose, a sugar found in food, for fuel.
So your body starts to process fat and muscle for fuel, says Susan M. De Abate, a nurse, certified diabetes educator, and team coordinator of the diabetes education program at Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital.
Tingling hands and feet
Too much glucose in your blood can affect the function of your nerves.
You may notice tingling and loss of sensation (numbness) in your hands and feet, as well as a burning pain in your arms, hands, legs, and feet.
Tingling hands and feet
Too much glucose in your blood can affect the function of your nerves.
You may notice tingling and loss of sensation (numbness) in your hands and feet, as well as burning pain in your arms, hands, legs, and feet.
Red, swollen, tender gums
Diabetes may weaken your ability to fight germs, which increases the risk of infection in your gums and in the bones that hold your teeth in place.
Your gums may pull away from your teeth, your teeth may become loose, or you may develop sores or pockets of pus in your gums — especially if you have a gum infection before diabetes develops.
