10 Early Diabetes Signs You Must Not Ignore

Hello Health Champions. If you wait until you  have most of these so-called early signs and  

symptoms of diabetes then you already have  problems that can lead to kidney failure  

blindness and amputations. That's why it's  so urgent that we understand what really are  

the early signs of diabetes here's what they  call the early signs and symptoms of diabetes  

and that's the problem because these are not early  signs and symptoms. These are in fact most of them  

very late signs and symptoms and since this list  is widely published chances are your doctor won't  

know the difference. And to make things worse  they don't even distinguish between type 1 and  

type 2 diabetes which in many ways are opposite  each other. That's why it's so critical that you  

understand the difference so you can take charge  of your health before it's too late. And I'm going  

to go over just a few simple ideas so that by  the end of this video you will probably know this  

better than your doctor all right sign number  one is a slow gradual weight gain and this  

is indeed an early sign of insulin resistance  moving toward type 2 diabetes unlike many of  

the other signs we'll talk about how many people  do you know or maybe you who say I've been eating  

the same I've been exercising the same but it  seems I keep putting on a few pounds every year  

that's probably most people and it's not  because we're just getting older it's because  

we are becoming more insulin resistant moving  toward type 2 diabetes sign number two is that  

you pee a lot you urinate a lot and this can  happen to both type 1 and type 2 diabetes but  

it is not an early sign this would happen quite  late because there is a renal threshold that the  

kidney can filter out glucose you filter water  and glucose but then the kidney reabsorbs it but  

there's a threshold around 180 milligrams and you  would have to have full-blown type 1 diabetes to  

get over that threshold and with type 2 diabetes  not only do you have to develop type 2 but you  

have to mismanage your glucose to the point where  it gets even worse all the way up to 180 or above  

so as your glucose rises virtually all of it like  99 point something percent gets reabsorbed because  

glucose is precious to the body but once you  exceed that threshold now the rest spills over  

and with the sugar going out it takes fluid with  it and of course if the fluids running out of you  

you get really really thirsty so pretty much the  same thing we talked about with type 1 diabetes  

it would be in a late stage with type 2 it would  also be fully developed type 2 diabetes but it  

would also pretty much be mismanaged because if  you do anything to keep your glucose under 180  

then you should not be losing fluid and sugar  through the urine then there's one more type I  

want to include to talk about just so we can  start understanding some of these mechanisms  

diabetes insipidus is where you get extreme  thirst because of extreme fluid loss first of  

all we have type 1 diabetes mellitus and this is  important to understand unlike the others it's an  

autoimmune condition your immune system your own  immune system goes after certain cells in the  

pancreas called beta cells so it's like a case of  mistaken identity and your immune system destroys  

these cells and then your body makes more beta  cells but the immune system has been triggered  

and it keeps destroying these so it's a gradual  process it's going to usually take several years  

to complete the process to where the body is  unable to make enough beta cells but once that  

process is kind of complete and the pathology is  there now you don't have enough insulin because  

you don't have enough beta cells to make the  insulin and now you have type 1 diabetes and  

the key about type one is that even though it  takes probably years for the process to complete  

once the symptoms come on it's almost overnight  it's like it seems in a few days or a couple of  

weeks it's like all or nothing and when diabetes  was first discovered over 3000 years ago  

type 1 diabetes was the type they talked about  they had people who had excessive urination  

and who wasted away who were emaciated type 2  diabetes is basically the opposite of type 1 this  

is insulin resistance and this takes even longer  it takes decades for the most part unless you  

have a young child and you start breaking down  their body by feeding them sugar and soda at an  

early age then it can happen faster but here the  problem is high insulin if you eat a lot of sugar  

and processed foods and seed oils and things that  trigger insulin now your insulin levels become  

chronically high your body and your cells and  your tissues develop resistance to those high  

levels of insulin and as you increase your insulin  resistance eventually it becomes type 2 diabetes  

which is nothing more than a very high level of  insulin resistance and the interesting thing is  

that this used to be extremely rare a couple  of hundred years ago the only type of diabetes  

they knew was type 1 but today over 90 percent  of diabetes is type 2 diabetes mellitus which  

is basically a man-made disease but here's an  interesting one gestational diabetes this is when  

you don't have diabetes supposedly and you get  pregnant and all of a sudden you're a diabetic so  

why does that happen it's because during  pregnancy you should become more insulin resistant  

and why is that insulin promotes growth and  storage and because you're growing a baby in you  

that's a lot of new tissues a lot of new cells  that need to be filled with building materials  

and fuel we need more insulin but also because  insulin is a storage hormone it converts fuel  

into fat and baby humans need to be really really  fat human babies are the fattest of any species  

relative to size because we have the biggest  brains and if we have huge brains and fuel supply  

the food supply is not super steady we need to  be able to break down fat turn them into ketones  

so human babies have lots of fat and they're  very very fast much faster than adults  

to get into ketosis to provide fuel for that  huge brain but that doesn't mean that you're  

supposed to become diabetic just because you  become pregnant what's probably happening is  

if you have some pre-existing insulin  resistance that you're not fully diabetic  

your glucose is still under control but your  insulin levels are quite high you're moving  

toward insulin resistant then it's like your  pre-diabetic your early stages and then becoming  

pregnant changing the hormones to support the baby  adds that final push over the edge and you become  

diabetic I've included diabetes insipidus just to  understand the picture a little bit better this  

is about a hormone called antidiuretic hormone  ADH it's also known as vasopressin but it has  

two functions vasopressin is like the name implies  putting pressure on blood vessels so it increases  

blood pressure but what increased blood pressure  does it forces more fluid through the kidneys  

but sometimes we're supposed to have higher blood  pressure without losing fluid through the kidneys  

so that's where the second function comes in  this hormone does two things it increases blood  

pressure but it also increases retention through  the kidneys reabsorption anti-diuretic hormone so  

we can raise the blood pressure without losing  fluid pretty smart huh but then there's people  

who have a defect a genetic defect or they have  a fault or a trauma or an injury or something  

to their hypothalamus that produces this and if  they can't make enough antidiuretic hormone then  

they can't keep the fluid in the kidneys filter  it out but there's nothing telling the kidney  

to reabsorb any so these people lose enormous  amounts of fluid there's very little reabsorption  

and as a result they have extreme thirst  they can drink 8 or 10 or 12 liters of water  

and nothing really helps it just runs straight  through them and they have this extreme thirst and  

now we have four different things with the name  diabetes and yet they're very different things  

they have very different mechanisms so how do  they come up with the names why do they call them  

diabetes well diabetes is a Greek word that  means pass through or flow through and the  

first one they found like I said was type one it  wasn't called that back then it was just diabetes  

and they added the word mellitus because mellitus  means honey sweet tasting sweet as honey and the  

other one was when they peed a lot but it had no  flavor that was because insipidus means lacking  

taste and now you're wondering how come they named  the different types of diabetes based on taste  

and flavor and unfortunately your worst fears  are true back in the day they actually had to  

taste the urine to see what was going on quite  a glamorous profession right fortunately today  

they have blood work otherwise I think that the  enrollment to medical school would suffer quite a  

bit now here's the issue we label them similarly  based on the end result because there is flow  

through they all called diabetes but they're very  different mechanisms basically type 1 and type 2  

are opposite each other however in most doctors  clinics it becomes like a knee-jerk reflex it's  

all about glucose management and now that you  understand how they work now you can pretty much  

predict why all of these are happening if you have  number four sudden weight loss this is going to  

happen in type 1 diabetes because type 1 they eat  food they make a lot of blood glucose but there's  

no insulin to take the glucose into the cell so  they're basically starving it's called starvation  

in the midst of plenty and they're wasting  away this was fatal virtually every case 100  

fatal until they figured out how to develop  insulin type 2 diabetes is the opposite  

problem there's too much insulin and they  tend to put on weight too much gestational  

is kind of the same thing there's a form of type  2 diabetes that occurs during pregnancy and with  

diabetes insipidus there is no relationship  there is no weight loss or gain only fluid sign  

number five is excess hunger people are hungry  all the time in type 1 it's like we said they  

make a lot of glucose they eat make glucose  but they can't use it so they're constantly  

starving it's like they never ate anything  and they're wasting away that would be a late  

stage you have to have full-blown type 1 diabetes  there's no sign along the way type 2 diabetes  

is a different mechanism because insulin is a  storage hormone and if you have a ton of insulin  

then you get really really good at storing away at  the expense of retrieving so if you have a bunch  

stored then essentially your fuel becomes locked  away you can't get to it and you have to eat more  

now this could happen quite early so this is  one of the reasons that we started with slow  

weight gain as sign number one because as soon  as you have a little bit of insulin resistance  

and elevated insulin now you tend to pack away  more than retrieve and you get hungry as a result  

sign number six is blurred vision this also has  to do with glucose but it's a different mechanism  

with type 2 diabetes you can get this and it's  going to be quite late this is often said to be  

an early symptom it is not first of all you have  to develop type 2 diabetes then you have to allow  

more time to complete a destructive degenerative  process and what happens is you have a bunch of  

small tiny blood vessels that are very sensitive  in the back of the eye and if you have too much  

glucose then that tends to promote leakage and  damage to the retina in type 1 you could also  

get this but pretty much you would have to allow  a lot of time and you would have to mismanage it  

if you get insulin and you maintain your glucose  at a good level then that should not be happening  

number seven is tingly hands and feet and this  happens because of swelling when you have high  

glucose glucose leaks out it takes some fluid with  it into the surrounding tissues and that swelling  

can hurt the nerves the fine nerve pathways and  you get neuropathy and with neuropathy or damage  

to nerves now you also get slow wound healing so  a lot of diabetics they have cuts and wounds that  

just won't heal and extreme cases they get them  on their toes and they get necrosis and they have  

to amputate and so forth and it's because healing  requires signals your body sends signals there's  

certain nerve signals and frequencies that the  brain sends to the area that needs to be repaired  

so that the body knows how to do that if the nerve  is damaged then this doesn't happen properly and  

you get very slow wound healing and this could  happen in both type 2 and type 1 but like I  

said you pretty much have to mismanage them to get  high blood sugar and it would be late and chronic  

it should not happen early on number eight  is hypertension or high blood pressure  

and unlike a lot of the other signs and  symptoms that are due to high blood glucose this  

is almost purely high insulin as we can see the  type 2 diabetics have the highest insulin and 80  

percent of them have high blood pressure but then  some people say wait not so fast type 1 diabetics  

also have a lot of high blood pressure problems  and indeed they about 30 percent of them  

have high blood pressure but high blood pressure  is pretty common it can be due to metabolic issues  

or stress basically and high blood pressure is  extremely common in the general population and  

the US average is about 45 percent of people have  high blood pressure so basically type 2 diabetics  

have super high insulin because they're already  diabetics the us average is on their way they're  

mostly pre-diabetic and type ones assuming that  they're managing their disease pretty well only  

have as much insulin as they inject so that would  explain these numbers perfectly and hypertension  

can be an early sign it's one of the few things on  this list that are actually an early sign and as  

soon as you get a little bit of raised insulin  that insulin tells the kidneys to resorb more  

sodium and more water so a higher fluid volume  tends to raise blood pressure and a lot of people  

who go on a low carb or a ketogenic diet the first  thing that happens is they drop their insulin  

some and from many of them very soon that blood  pressure starts coming down as well and again as  

a contrast diabetes insipidus by definition means  you're losing fluids and very often they have the  

opposite problem they can't keep enough salt and  water to maintain blood pressure so they often  

have hypotension or low blood pressure number nine  is one of my favorite things to do if you order  

blood work you can find these things out if you  order the right things and you know what they mean  

unfortunately the standard is to order glucose  and maybe a1c which is a three-month average  

glucose but glucose is a very controlled variable  the body will work very very hard to keep glucose  

within a narrow range and therefore it will take  a long long time before it gets out of control and  

if we only measure glucose we'll find out very  late that there's a problem this is where we  

miss 15 20 years of finding out what's going  on in type 1 diabetes then the glucose is  

usually not a problem as long as you have some  amount of insulin and then eventually when the  

pancreas fails to make hardly any insulin at all  then it's like an all or nothing it the glucose  

shoots through the roof in a matter of days  or weeks however I always include insulin  

on my blood work because insulin is used to  control glucose so if we only measure glucose  

we measure something that's being controlled but  if we're measuring insulin we're measuring the  

thing that's controlling it we're measuring how  hard the body is working to keep it there and  

glucose is almost flat for decades whereas insulin  is a gradual almost a straight line increase so  

if we measure insulin then we're going to find  out very very early so if the id level is at  

the bottom line here it could double and we find  out 15 20 years earlier than when the system has  

completely failed and again with type 1 diabetes  it's like an all or nothing thing as long as the  

body can make some insulin it's going to stay  constant but once it fails it's going to go down  

quickly and the glucose is going to shoot straight  up number 10 is an expanding waistline and in the  

case of gestational diabetes that waistline is  going to expand rather quickly and of course we  

can only hope that you know that you are pregnant  and that is the reason why it's growing rather  

fast in type 1 diabetes there should be no  change because you're starving essentially  

everything you're eating stays in the bloodstream  and you pee it out you can't get into the cells  

type 2 diabetes it's going to happen rather  slowly and this is just like slow weight gain  

and slow blood pressure increases one of the  best early signs that we can tell that we're  

moving toward diabetes however you could be  thin with a pouch you could have a normal BMI  

and just start growing a little pot belly or you  could be obese you could have weight everywhere  

and have most of it in the mid section so both of  these would be indications of moving toward type  

2 diabetes but there's an important distinction  that there's two places the body can store fat  

we can put it subcutaneous which means under the  skin a little bit everywhere like love handles and  

on the hips and legs or it could be visceral  and that means organ fat and the organ fat  

is the problem that's usually more related to  insulin resistance people with subcutaneous  

fat could be very overweight and not really have  any metabolic problems but the visceral fat is a  

problem and the visceral fat is actually much more  insulin resistant and it therefore if you have  

visceral fat it indicates a high level of insulin  resistance why is that because the visceral fat  

the body doesn't want that to grow because if it  grows then it puts pressure on your vital organs  

and it disturbs their function therefore visceral  organs are much more insulin resistant and that's  

why it indicates a problem if you enjoyed this  video you're going to love that one. And if you  

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