Symptoms for Diabetes
Suggested lead: Diabetes can affect women and men, children and adults, but women can have unique symptoms that warn of possible future problems. Tom Britt has more.
Most people with untreated diabetes report symptoms such as blurry vision, dry mouth and almost constant thirst, but Dr. Ann Brown of Duke University Medical Center says women can have other symptoms as well.
"Getting up at night to go to the bathroom in large volumes - not just the small volumes like when you have a urinary infection - but large volumes. Also, women can develop vaginal yeast infections that won't go away, that seem to come back quite frequently. That's often a symptom of diabetes."
Brown says some women develop diabetes during pregnancy, called 'gestational' diabetes. Even though gestational diabetes typically goes away on its own, Brown says it can indicate possible future problems with a return of full-blown diabetes, and should be followed closely. And she says the past several years have seen a revolution in diabetes treatment, with self-monitoring of blood sugar levels, and control through diet, exercise and daily medication rather than injections. The important thing she says, is to not ignore the symptoms. I'm Tom Britt.
Dr. Ann Brown says treatment for diabetes has undergone a revolution in the past few years.
Cut 2...diabetes...:17 . . . (Preview this in a WAV file in 16-bit mono.)
"What people saw their parents going through is not necessarily what they're going to go through, and that's important for people to realize. A lot of people will kind of bury their head in the sand because they don't even want to deal with it because it's such an awful thing. But in fact, life is a lot better these days for patients with diabetes."