Under diabetes is understood a serious chronic condition when a person’s body looses the ability to convert sugar into energy. It is fraught with such complications as heart disease, blindness, and others. Diabetes can happen in any age and has the symptoms that are so vague and indefinite that a lot of affected people do not realize that they actually are.

The most common symptoms of the condition are increasing thirst; also appetite (and result in changes in weight); frequent headaches, often accompanied with fatigue and vision problems; at last oversensitivity to infections that manifest in slow healing of wounds, appearance of yeast infections and itching.

The chances that you can develop this condition depend on some factors some of which you can control while others are not in your power. To the former refer a state of being overweight with hypertension and abnormal cholesterol and blood fats levels, also sedentary lifestyle. The latter attribute to your age, your race or ethnicity, and the fact of having family history of this illness.

This condition is not characteristic in children, though recently there are reported more and more cases of children with diabetes; the risk is even bigger provided a child is overweight and lacks activity.

The condition is diagnosed in a very simple way. There is a special test – fasting plasma glucose test – and it measures the amount of sugar in your blood after 8 hours of fasting. Generally 2 measurements are carried out and then the diagnosis is stated. Normal fasting blood glucose is between 70 and 100 mg/dL. If it is 126 mg/dL or higher then it is diabetes.

As it has already been mentioned the condition is fraught with complications. Diabetes can lead to development of kidney disease or failure and leave a person dependant of dialysis for the entire life; it can also evoke heart disease and lead to stroke or attack; it may lead also to blindness in some cases and this condition will be irreversible; feet are often get affected: they loose sensitivity and sores and gangrene develop. Other complications are also possible.

Though, no matter how serious the condition, it can be helped in some way; or better to say, relieved. The first thing is diet, good and healthy. Secondly, it is exercising. Even half-an-hour of brisk walking will make a difference to the way you feel. Then, do not forget to take all the necessary medications; and finally, as a lot of patients eventually develop “beta-cell failure” you may need insulin injections or an insulin pump.

But the best thing in the world is prevention. If you take care of your health there will be nothing to cure. So, be careful about the foods you eat, do not be lazy and make regular workouts, control your weight and if you have any worrying sensations go and check for diabetes beforehand.