Diabetes awareness month: Cost of insulin, diabetes symptoms and impact of COVID-19
Editor’s note: November is National Diabetes Month, and Nov. 9 was National Diabetes Day.
Imagine this: you wake up multiple times in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, then drink an entire glass of water before lying back down. You wake up the next day, tired but still very thirsty. Throughout the day you drink more than you eat, and go to sleep early.
What do these events have to do with each other, one might ask? These events are all symptoms of type one diabetes. Extreme thirst, fatigue, headaches, frequent urination, and weight loss are all warning signs of this illness.
So, what exactly is type one diabetes? According to the Mayo Clinic, diabetes is a group of diseases that affect how your body uses blood sugar, or glucose. There is no known cause of type one diabetes. The type of diabetes depends on the body’s ability to break down the sugar in the blood system. Breaking down this sugar depends on the pancreas.
“I would say I see more type two patients than type one,” Lisa Hichkad, physician assistant-certified at the Jones Center in Macon, said. “It’s about 70/30, but I have had some patients misdiagnosed as type two but are actually type one.”
Read the rest of the story here.
