Hi this is Dr K from imedicalschool and today we are going to talk about how to diagnose
diabetes.
Lets first start off by discussing what is diabetes mellitus.
Diabetes is when the body is unable to regulate levels of sugar or glucose within the body.
The complications of diabetes include micro vascular and macro vascular complications.
These complications include coronary artery disease, peripheral artery disease, kidney
failure, retinopathy and neuropathy.
Now why does the body lose control of serum glucose?
Well remember the pancreatic beta cells are responsible for producing insulin.
insulin causes a decrease inserum glucose.
So there are generally two causes to diabetes either low insulin production or increased
insulin resistance.
In type one diabetes an autoimmune response occurs where the body attacks the pancreatic
insulin producing beta cells.
In doing so the body is unable to produce an adequate amount of insulin.
We can test for this autoimmune response by testing for the antibodies antiglutamic acid
decarnixylase antibodies, anti islet cell autoantigen, and anti insulin antibodies.
Surprisingly these antibodies have also been shown in type 2 diabetics indicating that
with long standing type 2 diabetes there may be an underlying autoimmune process.
Type 2 diabetes occurs due to insulin resistance.
So as a society we love our fast food and fatty foods me included.
As our intake of carbs and sugar increases our body tries to regulate the elevated sugars
so our bodies produce tons of insulin.
After some time the body becomes desensitized to the high levels of insulin and the body
has to produce more to achieve the same effects.
This cycle continues producing a relative insulin deficiency due to insulin resistance.
With weight loss and a better diet the insulin resistance can improve.
So how do we diagnose diabetes.
Well the diagnosis of diabetes is based in symptoms and lab work.
It is important to take a history to identify symptoms of hyperglycemia like polyuria, polydypsia,
vision blurriness, fatigue, abdominal pain.
In term so lab work the diagnosis of diabetes can be established if random glucose is 200
or greater with hyperglycemia symptoms.
In addition dating plasma glucose 126 or greater, 2 hour post glucose challenge of 200 or greater,
or a hemoglobin a1c being 6.5 or greater.
If a lab work meets this criteria it needs to be repeated for confirmation.
In addition there are two high risk groups for developing diabetes.
These include impaired fasting glucose and impaired glucose tolerance.
Impaired fasting glucose is defined by a fasting plasma glucose of 100 to 125.
Impaired glucose tolerance I a 2 hour glucose level post 75 g glucose tolerance test of
140 to 199.
Well that is a brief review of how to diagnose diabetes in the future we will talk about
treatment and medical management of diabetics.
Make sure to share this video on Facebook and twitter you can follow us on twitter at
iMedSchool.
Follow is on Facebook by searching for our page imedicalschool.
Please like this video comment, and subscribe.
This is dr k and I will see you next time.