What Goes Wrong When Juvenile Diabetes (Type 1) Sets in
Type 1 diabetes can impact major organs in your body, including heart, capillary, nerves, eyes and kidneys. Keeping your blood sugar level near to normal the majority of the time can drastically reduce the risk of numerous complications.
Effects of Juvenile Diabetes (Type 1) on Your Body
Long-lasting complications of type 1 diabetes establish slowly, over decades. Excellent blood glucose management can assist decrease the risk of complications. Eventually, diabetes complications may be disabling and even lethal.
- Heart and blood vessel disease. Diabetes considerably increases your risk of various cardiovascular problems, including coronary artery disease with chest pain (angina), cardiovascular disease, stroke, constricting of the arteries (atherosclerosis) and hypertension.
- Nerve damage (neuropathy). Excess sugar can injure the walls of the small capillary (blood vessels) that nourish your nerves, particularly in the legs. This can cause tingling, numbness, burning or pain that typically starts at the suggestions of the toes or fingers and slowly spreads out up. Badly controlled blood glucose could cause you to eventually lose all sense of sensation in the affected limbs.
Damage to the nerves that affect the gastrointestinal tract can cause issues with queasiness, vomiting, diarrhea or constipation. For men, impotence may be a concern.
See also: Juvenile (or Type 1) Diabetes Symptoms
- Kidney damage (nephropathy). The kidneys contain millions of small blood vessel clusters that filter waste from your blood. Diabetes can damage this delicate filtering system. Severe damage can lead to kidney failure or irreparable end-stage kidney disease, which needs dialysis or a kidney transplant.
- Eye damage. Diabetes can damage the capillary of the retina (diabetic retinopathy), potentially resulting in blindness. Diabetes also increases the risk of other serious vision conditions, such as cataracts and glaucoma.
- Foot damage. Nerve damage in the feet or poor blood flow to the feet increases the risk of different foot complications. Left without treatment, cuts and blisters can end up being severe infections, which typically heal poorly and may ultimately need toe, foot or leg amputation.
- Skin and mouth conditions. Diabetes might leave you more susceptible to skin problems, including bacterial and fungal infections.
- Pregnancy complications. High blood glucose levels can be hazardous for both the mom and the baby. The risk of miscarriage, stillbirth and abnormality are increased when diabetes isn’t really well-controlled. For the mother, diabetes increases the risk of diabetic ketoacidosis, diabetic eye problems (retinopathy), pregnancy-induced hypertension and preeclampsia.
