There are two ways to explain complications of diabetes. It either causes direct infiltration on the blood vessels, present in the body or the more subtle way of infiltrating the small vessels which actually that supplies the large blood vessels (YES! They do exist) SMALL and LARGE vessels.
Complication Number 1: Causing you not to move
Yes, stroke is a complication of diabetes. How does it occur you may ask me? It’s quite simple actually. Over time, high blood sugar can actually signal the deposition of fats and clots in the vessels’ structure as the picture. Thus, it would cause narrowing of the vessels especially the one in the neck cutting off blood supply to the brain eventually causing a stroke.
Number 2: Causing you to have chest pain sometimes
A heart attack is a notorious complication due to the severity of the pain. Just imagine an elephant putting its foot right on your left side of the chest alongside thrusting pain over the neck and the left arm with the sensation of vomiting and sweating profusely.
Sounds gory right? The pain however is a good indicator that you are probably having a heart attack allowing you to take measures fast. Unfortunately in diabetics, they would not experience the pain and thus always die off a silent heart attack. Why do you ask? It’s due to the numbing of the nerves supplying the heart, similarly to the numbing of the foot leading them not to experience any pain.
Number 3: Causing you not to walk
Patients often describe a resting excruciating pain. This complication mainly due to their vessels being blocked in a similar fashion of what happened in the neck earlier in stroke. The inability of the leg to actually get blood supply eventually leading to a dying leg which experiences dire pain.
We hope to not have scared any of you with this information, this is merely to create awareness. All these complications can actually be avoided by having tighter sugar control. Tight sugar control is not an easy feat for any diabetic, thus kudos if you have achieved it. For those who have not, feel free to reach us to ask for help in tightening your sugar control.
We’ll be doing another post regarding the second type of complications of diabetes as mentioned in the beginning.
‘ Doctor, what if I’m not a diabetic? ‘
If this question is running in your mind, we would emphasize our vision to you; which would be advocating in the prevention of diseases in Malaysia rather than trying to cure it. Feel free to show us your latest screening report and let us interpret it for you.
