How common are severe diabetic complications?
Specific types of diabetes patients are at higher risk of severe side effects of the disease. In this video, HealthMaker John Merendino, MD, an endocrinologist, explains why this is the case and the steps that can prevent complications.
Transcript
Although sugar causes your body to put out a bunch of adrenaline, and that raises your heart rate and may cause cardiac rhythm
disturbances, may trigger a heart attack. [MUSIC PLAYING]
It's a rarity, in most instances. Certainly, for the average type 2 diabetic patient, it would be rare to die of low blood sugars or high blood
sugars if they have proper access to health care. But among the population of people with type 1 diabetes,
the frequency of death from low blood sugars, in particular, is not that low. It may be as much as 3%, maybe even as many as 5%
of those individuals lifelong will have sudden death as a result of very, very low blood sugars.
And this is-- for anybody with diabetes, whether they have type 1 or type 2 diabetes, low blood sugars or hyperglycemia is usually
what limits your ability to get their blood sugars under proper control because the body is adjusting
its insulin output every minute of the day, over 24 hours, and if your sugar goes up a little bit or down a little
bit, it makes a compensation. But you're obviously not able to do that. I mean, even if you're testing your sugar multiple times a day, it's still just a handful of times.
And in most cases, you don't have the ability to pull a medicine out of your system once it's in there, or give more medicine just because your sugar is
a little bit higher. So we try to get sugars down as close to normal as we can consistent with safety,
but clearly, if you start to get too low with blood sugars, then you start to see an increase in the mortality rate because
of low sugar reactions. In the last decade, there were three major studies that looked at the question of whether getting very, very
close to normal blood sugars helped patients do better overall than having just, you know,
by historical standards, a very good control. And it turned out that, as you got very close to normal,
the mortality rates started to go up. Probably because people were having low sugars, and a low sugar causes your body to put out
a bunch of adrenaline, and that raises your heart rate and may cause cardiac rhythm disturbances, may trigger a heart attack.
And frequently, you're talking about a population of people who have an increased risk of heart disease by virtue of having diabetes.
So it can be a real balancing act for people. But it depends a lot on what medications are used. Some medications clearly puts somebody
at risk for the development of low sugars. Others really don't carry that risk at all. [HEART BEATING] [AUDIO LOGO]
diabetes
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