How Is Diabetes Diagnosed
The four clinical signs of diabetes are also present in other feline diseases. Therefore, clinical signs alone are not sufficient to make a diagnosis. The two most important laboratory tests are the blood glucose level and a urinalysis. The normal blood glucose level is 80-120 mg/dL . Diabetic cats often have levels over 400 , or even 600 mg/dL . Diabetic cats also have glucose present in the urine. The combination of these two findings in a cat with at least two of the clinical signs of diabetes is sufficient evidence to make a diagnosis of diabetes.
A cats blood glucose level can be influenced by excitement. Stress hyperglycemia can result from a ride in an automobile and a visit to the veterinary hospital, especially in an excitable cat. This can confuse the testing process for diabetes. When this is suspected, another test, the serum fructosamine, can be used. This test gives an average blood glucose reading for the last two weeks. It will be clearly elevated in diabetic cats.
What Are The Causes Of High Blood Sugar
Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas. It helps in moving glucose from the digested food to the cells to be used as energy. High blood sugar can occur if the body does not have enough insulin. There are various conditions that affect the insulin function, thus resulting in high blood sugar. Some of the causes that contribute to high and even dangerous levels of blood sugar include the following,
- If a diabetic person misses taking the diabetes medication.
- Overeating, especially the food rich in carbohydrates.
- Lack of exercise or physical activity
- Infection or certain illnesses that cause the blood sugar to rise quickly.
- Intake of Certain medications such as steroids that affect sugar levels.
- Excessive and prolonged stress
Effects Of Alcohol Consumption In The Fasting State
In contrast to chronic alcohol consumption in the fed statewhich raises blood sugar levels, resulting in hyperglycemiaalcohol consumption in the fasting state can induce a profound reduction in blood glucose levels . That effect has been observed in both type 1 and type 2 diabetics as well as in nondiabetics . Hypoglycemia can have serious, even life-threatening, consequences, because adequate blood sugar levels are needed to ensure brain functioning.
Alcohol-induced hypoglycemia typically occurs in people who, sometimes for days, have been drinking alcohol but not eating. In such a fasting state, the body has two major mechanisms for maintaining the blood sugar levels necessary to provide energy to the brain: breakdown of glycogen, or glycogenolysis, and production of glucose, or gluconeogenesis.
Glycogen is a large molecule that consists of numerous glucose molecules and serves as a storage form of glucose in the tissues, particularly the liver. In the fasting state, as a first line of defense against hypoglycemia, glycogen is broken down into its constituent glucose molecules, which are secreted by the liver into the blood to maintain normal or near-normal blood sugar levels. Generally, the glycogen supply is depleted after 1 or 2 days of fasting. Thus, a person who has been drinking alcohol and not eating for 1 or more days has exhausted his or her glycogen supply.
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Headaches And Difficulty Concentrating
Acute hyperglycemia can cause headaches and difficulty concentrating in a fashion similar to polyphagia in which starving cells send out hunger signals because they cant access the glucose circulating in the blood.
Your brain is the biggest glucose hog around. If you dont believe it, consider that while the brain represents about 2 percent of your body weight, it devours fully 25 percent of the glucose you consume. And when brain cells have difficulty getting the fuel they need, they function poorly. This can cause problems with thinking, reasoning, and remembering, difficulty staying focused on tasks, and headaches.
Chronic high blood glucose can also lead to headaches, but by a different route. These headaches are often related to various types of nerve damage. Examples include occipital neuropathy, or damage to the optic nerve from elevated glucose levels, and a variety of diabetic mononeuropathies, which can affect specific cranial nerves, peripheral nerves, or nerve roots all of which can lead to headaches of varying intensities.
What Causes High Blood Sugar Levels In The Morning
Commonly known reasons why your blood sugar may be high in the morning include high-carb bedtime snacks and not enough diabetes medications.
Yet two lesser-known reasons may be causing your morning blood sugar woes: the dawn phenomenon and the Somogyi effect. These causes of high morning blood sugar levels are a result of body changes and reactions that happen while you are sleeping.
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How Often Should You Have An A1c Lab Test
Your healthcare provider may order an A1C test every three months to monitor diabetes treatment changes, such as adjustments to medications, insulin pump settings, or other areas of diabetes self-management. If your blood glucose is within range and stable, your healthcare provider may only order the test every six months.
If you have not been diagnosed with diabetes, sometimes A1C is used along with other measures to help diagnose diabetes. It may also be used as a baseline measurement for people with a strong family history of diabetes or other risk factors to see if levels are increasing over time.
How To Reduce Blood Sugar
You can take steps to reach your blood sugar goals as soon as you find out that it is high. This is how to reduce blood sugar if you have a single high reading that may be dangerous:
- Ask your doctor what to do if you missed a dose of insulin or another diabetes medication
- Ask your doctor if your medication types and doses are still appropriate for you
- Drink water to dilute the sugar
- Exercise for 15 minutes
- Eat a small protein snack, such as a hard-boiled egg, ½ ounce of peanuts or pistachios or other nuts, ½ cup of beans, or ½ cup of plain yogurt or cottage cheese
If you have chronically high blood sugar in prediabetes or diabetes, you can follow this treatment plan:
- Exercise regularly, assuming your doctor approves it
- Lose weight if you are overweight or obese
- Eat a higher proportion of vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, healthy fats, and fruit
- Limit sugary foods and beverages, fried foods, refined starches, and processed and fatty red meats
- Beware of starchy vegetables such as sweet potatoes, which can spike your blood sugar. Check out our guide of which veggies to avoid!
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Levels In The Morning
The best time to check blood sugar levels in the morning is right when you wake up and before you eat anything. This gives you a glimpse of what may be happening overnight, and it gives you a baseline for the day.
These are goal levels, according to The Joslin Diabetes Center:
- Under 70 mg/dl if you do not have diabetes.
- 70 to 130 mg/dl if you have diabetes.
The dawn effect can often lead to a high morning measurement in diabetes. This is your bodys tendency to get ready for the day by raising blood sugar by increasing levels of counter-regulatory hormones the ones that counteract insulin as in normal blood sugar. For people with diabetes, you do not have the capacity to counterbalance this rise in blood sugar, so levels can be dangerously high.
Ways to lower your morning blood sugar value include:
- Eating dinner earlier
- Checking your medications making sure you are taking them properly and asking your doctor if they are correct
- Going for a walk after dinner
- Including protein with your dinner
What Are The Things I Need To Know About Handling Insulin
Insulin is sold in sterile, air-tight bottles. It should be refrigerated at all times. Persistent warm temperatures and direct sunlight will inactivate it.
The active insulin crystals settle out of suspension in a few hours. When you are ready to us it, all or most of the crystals will be stuck to the bottom of the bottle. The label instructs you to roll it gently in your hands. However, gentle rolling may not be adequate to properly put the insulin crystals back into suspension with the liquid. If that happens, consistent dosing of insulin is very unlikely. You may draw up the correct volume of insulin in the syringe, but the amount of active insulin crystals will probably not be correct. This means that your cat will not get the proper dose and is one of the common causes of regulation difficulties.
Extremely vigorous shaking can damage the insulin crystals, but shaking also makes foam in the bottle. When you draw the foam into your syringe, you will have difficulty getting the correct amount of insulin. Therefore, reasonable shaking is needed to properly resuspend the insulin crystals, but shaking too vigorously can create foaming problems. Be sure that you sha
ke the bottle until all of the white material is off of the bottom of the bottle and is well mixed with the liquid.
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Risks Of High Readings
If you experience spikes in blood glucose after you eat high-carbohydrate meals, your levels will be higher than normal for as much as six to nine hours out of each day. High blood glucose damages blood vessels, which leads to complications such as diabetic retinopathy and neuropathy, or nerve damage. High blood glucose levels after meals also increases your risk of developing atherosclerosis, a build-up of plaque in the arteries that can cause heart attack or stroke.
References
Average From A Glucose Meter
Although an A1C level gives you a sense of average glucose levels over the past few months, a person with type 1 or type 2 diabetes needs a blood glucose meter to check blood sugar and make treatment decisions on a day-to-day basis.
If you test often during the day like before and after meals and other times that your blood sugar can vary and use an accurate glucose meter, this can give you valuable information on daily variations in blood sugar levels. Many blood glucose meters are also equipped to provide 7, 14, 30, or 90-day averages. A 90-day average on your meter can be used in the calculator above to estimate how it may correlate to an A1C.
Glucose meter averages are based on the frequency that you have tested per day, so if you do not have many data points or are unable to test at certain times , it probably wont give you a full picture of your blood sugar levels and may skew lower than an A1C test result.
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What Does A Diagnosis Of Diabetes Mean To Me
There are some definite financial obligations involved in treating a diabetic cat however, the majority of expenditure occurs during the regulation phase. The cost is especially great if the cat is ketoacidotic, but this occurs in less than 10% of diabetic cats. Once the cat is stable, the costs for insulin, syringes, and rechecks are minimal.
However, the financial aspect is not the only factor. This disease also requires a substantial amount of involvement on your part to keep the cat regulated. You will be giving insulin injections daily, often twice daily. You will also need to monitor the cats progress and be aware of signs that it is not well regulated. These will be discussed in detail in the following sections.
If you are not dedicated to keeping your diabetic cat regulated, you will be disappointed with the results and the expenses associated with poor regulation. However, most diabetic cats can be regulated and continue to be a pleasant part of your family. But, your commitment and involvement are critical.
Levels After Youve Eaten
Many foods have types of carbohydrates called starches and sugars. When you eat foods with these types of carbohydrates, your body breaks them down into glucose, which is a type of simple sugar, and releases the glucose into your bloodstream. Aside from glucose produced by your liver, food is the main source of plasma glucose.
Two hours after eating, your blood sugar levels rise. They rise more when you eat more carbohydrates, when you do not eat fiber, fat, or protein with your carbs, and when you eat certain types of carbohydrates, such as refined sugars and starches.
These are target values from The Joslin Diabetes Center, which include levels for people with diabetes:
| When Measured |
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Control Diabetes For Life
In 2015, 30.3 million Americans, or 9.4% of the population, had diabetes. Of the 30.3 million adults with diabetes, 23.1 million were diagnosed, and 7.2 million were undiagnosed.
Diabetes remains the 7th leading cause of death in the United States in 2015, with 79,535 death certificates listing it as the underlying cause of death, and a total of 252,806 death certificates listing diabetes as an underlying or contributing cause of death.
Diabetes is a disease characterized by high levels of blood glucose resulting from defects in insulin production, insulin action, or both. Diabetes can be associated with serious complications and premature death, but people with diabetes can take steps to control the disease and lower the risk of complications.
Choose Low Glycemic Index Foods
The glycemic index measures and ranks various foods by how much they cause blood sugar levels to rise. Research shows that following a low glycemic index diet decreases fasting blood sugar levels.
Low glycemic index foods are those that score below 55 on the glycemic index. Examples of low glycemic foods include:
- sweet potatoes
- fruit
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What Cheese Is Good For Type 2 Diabetes
indicate that the affected person is in danger You can not contemplate a reading of seven5 as regular it s indicative of kind 2 diabetes When you turn to new treatment, it is important to report your blood levels It helps your supplier understand if the medicines are working.
Rampant elevated Does sprycell raise blood sugar blood sugar levels could be genetic or as a end result of lifestyle choices Fruit or spice infused water or carbonated water with 211 Blood Sugar no sugar Low Blood Sugar added will maintain you hydrated without causing problems together with your blood sugar Tea is also a zero sugar beverage that Eclectic Institute Blood Sugar Support contains antioxidants, which have been shown to help regulate blood sugar ranges Nuts are stuffed with unsaturated fats , that are usually thought about wholesome fats.
If you re at high danger of developing diabetes, taking this treatment is crucial for decreasing excessive glucose levels Part of the body s fight or flight response to stress is to supply extra glucose Another facet of that response 211 Blood Sugar is an increase in the hormone cortisol High cortisol 211 Blood Sugar can scale back the body s sensitivity to insulin.
How To Measure Your Spikes
The American Diabetes Association recommends you check your blood sugar levels right before mealtime with a blood sample from a finger stick. Then do it again 1 to 2 hours after that first bite of food.
Keep this up for a week or so. Write down the time and the blood sugar number. Make a note about anything you think might affect your levels, like medicine or exercise. And don’t forget to log exactly what you ate, along with portion sizes and the amount of carbs.What levels are too high after a meal? Experts vary on what the number should be, but the ADA says a general goal is a blood sugar level under 180 mg/dL, 1 to 2 hours after a meal. Talk to your doctor about what you should aim for, and don’t adjust your medicine without speaking to them first.
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Why You Should Keep An Eye On It
When your blood sugar is high, you can get symptoms like a foggy-headed feeling that makes it hard to focus or think clearly. Your energy may also take a dive, and you may feel nervous or moody.
If your levels go too low, you could even pass out. In the long run, if your blood sugar stays up, you could be at risk for heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, or other problems.
What Is The Somogyi Effect
A second possible cause of high blood sugar levels in the morning is the Somogyi effect, sometimes also called rebound hyperglycemia. It was named after the doctor who first wrote about it.
If your blood sugar drops too low in the middle of the night while you are sleeping, your body will release hormones in an attempt to rescue you from the dangerously low blood sugar. The hormones do this by prompting your liver to release stored glucose in larger amounts than usual. But this system isnt perfect in a person with diabetes, so the liver releases more sugar than needed which leads to a high blood sugar level in the morning. This is the Somogyi effect.
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Several Factors May Cause A Persons Postprandial Blood Sugar To Remain Elevated
Smoking after the meal: Studies show that smoking raises blood sugar levels in people with diabetes. Extreme stress: Stress produces the bodys fight-or-flight response triggering the release of stress hormones such as cortisol. These hormones cause the body to release the glucose it has previously stored for energy. Eating or drinking after the meal and before testing the blood sugar: Continuing to eat will keep blood sugars closer to their immediate post-meal levels.
Studies show that 15 to 20 minutes of moderate exercise, such as walking, shortly after a meal may improve glucose metabolism and reduce postprandial glucose levels.