Diabetes explained

How do doctors define diabetes?
The standard definition of diabetes mellitus is excessive glucose in a blood sample and in other words, you have too much sugar in your blood. For years, doctors set this level fairly high. The World Health Organisation (WHO) lowered the standard level for normal glucose in 1997, and now almost everyone in the UK uses this new standard for diagnosis. Why did the WHO decide to lower the standard level? Because too many people were experiencing complications of diabetes even though their glucose level wasn't high enough to be diagnosed with diabetes. The new definition of diabetes includes symptoms of diabetes, along with any one of the following three criteria:

A random plasma sugar level greater than 11 mmol/l (millimoles per litre)

A fasting plasma sugar level greater than or equal to 7mmol/l (or 6.1mmol/l in whole blood)

A plasma sugar level greater than 11 mmol/l two hours after drinking 75 grams of glucose dissolved in water in an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT)

Mmol/l stands for millimoles per litre. This way of measuring blood glucose concentrations is used almost all over the world, except in America. Over there, most glucose measurements are in mg/dl, or milligrams per decilitre. To translate mmol/l into mg/dl, multiply your figure in mmol/l by 18. So if you're travelling in the US and need to speak to a doctor, make sure that one of you has a calculator to hand!

What type of diabetes do you have?

Identifying the symptoms of type 1 diabetes
Type 1 diabetes used to be called juvenile diabetes because it occurs most frequently in children. However, so many cases are found in adults that doctors don't use the term juvenile any more. The disease isn't gender biased, either. Males and females get type 1 diabetes to an equal degree. The following sections list the general symptoms and give some important information on how and when these symptoms can manifest themselves in kids.

General symptoms
Before your doctor actually diagnoses you with type 1 diabetes, you may notice that you have some of the major signs and symptoms.

See your doctor
If you (or your child) experience the following symptoms, take time to ask your doctor about the possibility that you have diabetes:

Frequent urination: You experience frequent urination because your kidneys can?t return all the glucose to your bloodstream when your blood glucose level is greater than about 10 mmol/l. The large amount of glucose in your urine makes the urine so concentrated that water is drawn out of the blood and into the urine to reduce the concentration of glucose in the urine. This fills up the bladder repeatedly.

Increased thirst: Your thirst increases because you lose so much water in your frequent urination that your body begins to dehydrate.

Weight loss: You lose weight as your body loses glucose in the urine and your body breaks down muscle and fat looking for energy.

Increased hunger: You notice that you're increasingly hungry. Your body has plenty of extra glucose in the blood, but your hunger is a result of your cells becoming malnourished because you lack insulin required to allow the glucose to enter your cells. Your body is going through "hunger in the midst of plenty".

Weakness: You feel weak because your muscle cells and other tissues don't get the energy that they require from glucose.