Feb 23 2009
Diabetes Symptom and Your Weight
A common diabetes symptom is that of gaining or losing weight pretty quickly. While losing weight may not seem a particularly bad diabetes symptom it can still have a negative impact on your health, depending upon the type of diabetes that you have.
Maintaining a healthy weight is one of the most important steps you can take to manage your diabetes. Being overweight can raise your blood glucose level and cause high blood pressure, increasing your risk of heart and circulatory problems. The places on your body where you carry any excess weight is also important. Find out whether you are a healthy weight for your height, why you may lose or gain weight when you have diabetes, and how to lose weight if you need to.
Why weight matters
Your weight can influence how easy it is to manage your specific diabetes symptoms, and can make a difference to the type and dose of any medication you take. Being overweight makes controlling your blood glucose level, blood pressure, and cholesterol more difficult and increases the risk of complications such as heart disease.
Keeping your weight within the recommended range for your height or if you need to, losing a little weight, has many health benefits, on top of the obvious benefits of being able to better manage and control your diabetes symptom.
Type 1 diabetes
Rapid weight loss is a common symptom of Type 1 diabetes and a high blood glucose level (hyperglycemia). Once you start insulin treatment, however, you should put the weight back on. If you have lost a large amount of weight, you will probably need a low dose of insulin to begin with; once you start to regain weight, you may need to change the dose based on your own day-to-day blood glucose test results. Your weight will also be checked at your annual review and compared with the previous year to assess whether your insulin dose is too high – taking too much insulin may lead to weight gain.
Type 2 diabetes
You are more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes if you are overweight because being overweight can make your cells resistant to the action of insulin. Four out of five people diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes symptoms are overweight, so you may well have been advised to lose weight. Even losing a small amount will make it easier to control your blood glucose level, lower blood pressure and cholesterol (and any other diabetes symptom you experience), and prevent or delay the onset of future complications, such as heart disease. You are also likely to need a lower dose of tablets, less insulin, or you may be able to control your diabetes without any medication at all. If you’re not overweight, you may want to regain some of the weight you lost or keep your weight within a healthy range.
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