Why Blood Sugar High
If you've had diabetes for a while, you're undoubtedly familiar with the symptoms of high blood sugar. (Thirst, frequent urination, impaired vision, and slow-healing wounds, among other symptoms).
Have you ever considered why these symptoms occur? How can a high glucose level cause your eyesight to blur? Here are some solutions.
Diabetes is characterized by elevated blood glucose levels (referred to as hyperglycemia by medical practitioners).
It nearly always occurs when the body is unable to maintain a normal blood sugar level, perhaps because the body produces insufficient insulin but also because the body's cells are now so resistant to insulin that the pancreas could no longer keep up. Glucose begins to accumulate in the circulation rather than being delivered to the cells.
- Learn more about blood glucose management
What is a high blood sugar level?
- Learn more about blood glucose management What is high blood sugar?
Very high blood glucose levels are more than 130 mg/dl before a meal or more than 180 mg/dl two hours after the first bite of a meal.
Most symptoms, however, do not occur until the blood glucose level exceeds 250 mg/dl.
Some symptoms appear rapidly, while others take a prolonged period of elevated blood glucose levels to be identified.
It is essential to recognize that the consequences of high blood sugar differ from person to person. Some people experience symptoms faster or more powerfully than others; each symptom has a biological foundation or a specific reason.
Acute or persistent hyperglycemia can occur. The acute phase is short and is frequently caused by a heavy carbohydrate meal or a missed dosage of medicine, among other things.
Chronic hyperglycemia, but on the other hand, is defined by consistently high blood glucose levels. It is frequently caused by undiagnosed diabetes or an ineffective diabetic management plan.
Chronic hyperglycemia may be the more hazardous of the two, as elevated blood glucose levels can be damaging to bodily tissues over time.
In reality, several symptoms of high blood sugar are the result of cell damage induced by high blood sugar.
Elevated blood sugar symptoms are what usually prompt people with undiagnosed diabetes to seek medical treatment and receive a diagnosis.
After being diagnosed with diabetes and undergoing treatment, high blood sugar symptoms might also emerge. It's an indication that your diabetes isn't under control.
Polyuria, polydipsia, and polyphagia are the typical signs of high blood sugar.
These phrases indicate excessive urination, excessive thirst, and excessive appetite. If a doctor hears this trio of symptoms, he or she will seek a blood glucose meter. However, these symptoms are frequently overlooked by the individual experiencing them.
This is partly because these symptoms often start gradually and because symptoms of high blood glucose are not recognized in people who do not have or do not know they have diabetes.
The three classic symptoms caused by high blood glucose:
Excessive urination (frequent urination)
Polyuria is the result of a disorder in the body's biological and chemical chain of reaction. It begins in the blood, where high glucose concentrations osmotically draw intracellular fluid into the bloodstream. The body tries to match the concentration of glucose in the blood with the concentration in the cells.
By diluting the blood with intracellular fluid, the glucose concentration reaches a near-normal level. Initially, this raises blood fluid volume while drying cells.
Meanwhile, kidney dysfunction begins. Normally, the kidneys serve as filters, removing waste and returning clean fluid to the body. The return of clean fluid, or fluid reabsorption, occurs in the renal tubules, which is the internal structure of the million filtering nephrons in each kidney.
When the glucose content of the fluid entering the nephrons surpasses 250 mg/dl, however, The renal tubules' reabsorption capacity is inhibited, resulting in osmotic diuresis, or the outflow of excessive volumes of urine. Until glucose levels normalize, the kidney tubules cannot regain the ability to absorb fluids.
Then a double reaction is triggered. Cells pump water into the circulation, and the kidneys, unable to reabsorb fluid during filtration, begin to release water from the body uncontrolled. The result is an excessive volume of urination.
To meet the clinical definition of polyuria, urine output for an adult must exceed 2.5 liters per day (normal urine output is 1.5 liters per day). Extremely high blood glucose levels, on the other hand, might result in the production of 15 liters (about 4 gallons) of urine each day, a fluid loss comparable to that found in cholera patients. In rare cases, polyuria can reach 20-25 liters per day, about half the total volume of fluid in the body.
The dehydrating effect of polyuria is key to many of the other symptoms of hyperglycemia (high blood sugar), including polydipsia.
Excessive thirst
Polydipsia is the result of the dehydrating effects of polyuria. The body tries to rehydrate. The brain sends thirst signals via osmoreceptors, which are specialized cells in the hypothalamus that sense the amount of plasma osmolality and blood dehydration and produce the desire to consume fluids when a person is dehydrated.
The relationship between urination and excessive thirst is often misunderstood by people who experience high blood glucose levels, especially before diabetes is diagnosed. Many people assume that excessive thirst causes excessive urination and not the other way around. Therefore, they are quick to dismiss excessive urination, thinking "Well, lately I've been drinking a lot ..."
To complicate matters, many people drink a soda when they are thirsty, and most sodas contain some form of sugar and caffeine. Sugar raises your blood glucose level even more, and caffeine is a diuretic that worsens polyuria. Together they increase thirst rather than quench it.
Excessive hunger
Excessive hunger is not so much due to high blood sugar as low insulin. Low insulin can be caused by an absolute shortage of insulin as in type 1 diabetes, or it may be a relative shortage of insulin as in type 2 diabetes. Either way, the amount of insulin in the blood is insufficient. to move glucose molecules from the bloodstream into cells where they can be used as fuel for cellular functions.
If cells cannot access glucose, they send hunger signals through a variety of signaling hormones including leptin, ghrelin, orexin, and PYY 3-36.
All of these hormones send signals to the hypothalamus to cause hunger. Cells are unaware that they are hungry despite having so much glucose around them. The glucose they need exists in abundance in the bloodstream, but insulin deficiency makes it inaccessible. This can cause fierce hunger that causes blood sugar to rise when the person eats.
Weightloss
Even though you may be eating like crazy when your blood glucose is continuously high, you will still lose weight, and there are three reasons for this:
First, fluid loss through excessive urination can result in low body fluids, which can make you weigh less. This is what explains the very rapid weight loss when diabetes is diagnosed.
Second, if your insulin levels are lowered and you can't metabolize glucose, your body will start burning fat to support cellular metabolism, and burning fat can result in weight loss (just what you're trying to do. in the gym, right?)
Third, a large amount of urine that high blood glucose generates is rich in glucose, sometimes greater than 1,000 mg/dl. That glucose is high in calories, and when there are high levels of glucose in your urine, you are urinating calories because your body is trying to get rid of excess glucose.
If you develop high blood glucose and have maintained a stable weight without changing your eating habits, your weight loss is due to a high glucose level.
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