What are the major issues or symptoms patients complain about prior to being diagnosed with diabetes?
The importance of diagnosing pre-diabetes is avoiding progression into frank diabetes and the problems pre-diabetes can lead to, including heart attack, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, various cancers and dementia. I see diabetics in my office every day who have been misdiagnosed because doctors do not realize a fasting blood sugar of 90 or higher is pre-diabetes, and a diabetic is level at 126. The general medical population is unaware of these new guidelines. As a result, I am seeing many patients with diabetes who don’t know it. Common signals that suggest a predisposition to becoming diabetic begin with risk factors, including family history, hypertension, visceral adiposity, high triglycerides, low high-density lipoprotein (HDL), low testosterone and elevated uric acid. Symptoms that can be a clue to diabetes are unexplained weight loss, fatigue, blurry vision, dizzy spells, poorly healing wounds and other nondescript symptoms of fatigue.
