What are some symptoms of diabetes?

Most people have no symptoms when they first develop type 2 diabetes. In this video, Judith Fradkin, MD, director at the National Institutes of Health, explains the symptoms of very high blood sugar and why people should be tested.

Transcript

00:00

By the time you're losing sugar through your urine and getting dehydrated, your diabetes is very far progressed.

00:06

[MUSIC PLAYING]

00:13

Early in the course of type-2 diabetes don't have any symptoms. And that's why it's important for people

00:19

to have their risk of diabetes characterized and get screened or tested for diabetes

00:25

before they have symptoms because most people, the symptoms are really related to high blood sugar. And you can have a blood sugar which is at a level

00:33

that it may be damaging your eyes or your kidney over time. But you would have no symptoms of that. By the time you have symptoms, your blood sugar is very high.

00:43

And the symptoms are usually very nonspecific. It can be fatigue or increased thirst or increased need

00:50

to go to the bathroom. By the time you're losing sugar through your urine and getting dehydrated, your diabetes

00:56

is very far progressed. So other than with type-1 diabetes, which can present very suddenly with life

01:03

threatening high levels of glucose, people need to have their risk of diabetes assessed.

01:10

It's generally recommended that everybody be tested for diabetes when they get to be 40 or 45, just because age is a risk factor,

01:18

and diabetes is so common in older people. But for even younger people, if you have a lot of risk factors,

01:24

if you have a family history, if you've had gestational diabetes, if you're very overweight, if you have high blood pressure, these

01:32

are reasons why people should get screened for diabetes at an earlier age. [AUDIO LOGO]