Diabetes Warning Signs You Can’t Afford to Ignore

Your mouth is often dry

Everyone’s mouth gets dry from time to time. This could happen due to anything from dry weather to not getting enough water to drink. But if your mouth feels dry more often than not, then you may actually have diabetes.

How does that work? In short, one of the chief side effects of having diabetes is that your body doesn’t produce enough insulin on its own. This can manifest in a number of ways, including your mouth feeling dry.

You’re always thirsty

This next diabetes warning sign goes hand in hand with the first. Just as the lack of insulin can make your mouth feel dry, it can also make you feel like you’re constantly thirsty.

Don’t freak out just because you’re thirsty: it’s perfectly natural to feel that way if you haven’t had a glass of water recently. But as with the sensation of dry mouth, you should consider constant thirst a potential diabetes warning sign and consult with your physician.

Frequently having to pee

One of the most surprising warning signs of diabetes is that you have to urinate very often. In addition to being a surprising sign of this sickness, this is also one of the more reliable indicators. To understand why, you need to understand a bit more about how diabetes affects your body.

When you have diabetes, you may have too much sugar in your bloodstream. When that happens, your kidneys will have to go the extra mile to rid your body of the sugar. In short, that may be why you need to pee more often than you once did. Of course, other factors (including age) may cause you to run to the bathroom very often, so be sure to speak to your doctor about a potential diagnosis.

Wounds take too long to heal

All of us get tiny wounds from time to time. Cat scratches, thorn scrapes, foot blisters…all of these painful annoyances are just a part of life. But ask yourself: are you healing from these wounds much slower than you once did?

As we noted, those with diabetes have a high amount of sugar in their blood. Among other side effects, this may cause your wounds to heal much slower than they once did. Since these wounds can lead to infection and possibly even nerve damage, it’s important to speak with your doctor ASAP if you’re worried you may have diabetes.

Very dry skin

Plenty of environmental factors can cause your skin to dry out. This includes spending too much time in the sun or even taking too many showers in too short a time. But if your skin is often very dry without any real explanation, then you may have diabetes and not know it.

This dryness may affect almost any part of your skin. With that being said, dry feet are likelier to be a sign of diabetes than other parts of your body. Long story short? If your skin is dry and you don’t know why, it’s time to speak to your doctor.

Unexplained weight loss

Before you say it, we get it: unexplained weight loss sounds like a dream come true. After all, who wouldn’t want to wake up tomorrow and have shed a bunch of pounds without exercising more or eating less? Sadly, though, sudden and unexplained weight loss is one of the bigger signs of diabetes.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that this is typically a sign of early diabetes. If you notice this about your body and speak to your physician, you may be able to get your diabetes under control before it does major damage to your body.

Vision troubles

As we get older, it’s not uncommon that we need to go to the eye doctor as our vision gets worse. Most of the time, this simply results in a prescription for glasses or contacts. However, there may be a more sinister cause of your vision problems: diabetes.

Diabetes can cause a host of vision problems, including dark spots, blurred vision, and outright vision loss. It’s important to treat all vision problems seriously because doing so can help you diagnose and treat diabetes, and the treatment you get can help improve your quality of life.