I’m not diagnosed with Diabetes, but I was found to be pre-diabetic a few years ago. I was riding my bike this afternoon in 90 degree heat, and hadn’t eaten anything but an Egg McMuffin and a slice of toast.
The ride went fine until the end, when I was pushing my bike up the hill back to my aunt’s place and I suddenly found that I felt almost unbearably nauseous and short of breath. I was caked in sweat by the time I got inside, and I sat down on my aunt’s couch to catch my breath and have something to hydrate myself with.
About an hour later I had a cocktail and a cigarette outside in the heat and I started feeling dizzy again. This didn’t subside until after I had dinner, which made me feel totally fine once it hit my system.
Ever since I was a child, I have got nauseous when I haven’t eaten for more than a few hours and I urinate probably every hour when I’m awake. Do you think it’s possible I have mild undiagnosed Type 1 diabetes that is progressively getting worse with age? I’m 25 now and every morning I wake up, I feel thirsty and “gross” and have a bad taste in my mouth. It’s generally worse if I’ve had more than a couple drinks, but even on sober days I still wake up to a metallic taste and slightly upset stomach.
If I was called to pick you up, I would have assumed heat exhaustion, the mildest of the heat injuries. 20 seconds with a glucose meter would have confirmed or ruled out hypoglycemia.
The problem is that exhaustion, dehydration, high and low blood glucose share a bunch of the same symptoms. Get tested. Although getting dizzy if you haven’t eaten in a few hours sounds more like hypoglycemia. The “after meal” big symptom of untreated diabetes is falling asleep.
RN Diabetic Educator here. Such a thing as mild undiagnosed type 1 diabetes is pretty much impossible or at least very, very unlikely. You may have meant type 2.
At any rate, sounds more like heat exhaustion/dehydration to me.
If you’re concerned, get a doc to run a fasting glucose and/or an A1c on you, though at your age, it’s not likely you need them unless you have other risk factors.
I’m with everyone else; that sounds more like heat issues than low or high blood sugar. For diabetics on insulin, going low while exercising is a risk, but even then, the symptoms you describe aren’t quite the same, at least not for me (everyone varies though). I get shaky & weak while low, but not dizzy or nauseous or out of breath.
Really? I was under the impression that the older one is, the less extreme the onset of T1 is. People who end up diagnosed with LADA practically slide into it. Hell, I had no real symptoms other than mild weight loss when I was diagnosed. I’d gone in for a physical, hadn’t seen a doctor in years, and mentioned the weight loss and he was like “well, it’s probably nothing, but let’s run the battery of blood tests and make sure.” I think he was as surprised as I was when it came back with some crazy high blood sugar number.
That is another thing. I’ve lost probably 15-20 pounds over the past few weeks even though I haven’t really been trying particularly hard. I have been drinking fewer soft drinks though.
I’m with Qadgop. Given that, go get tested. Or, at the very least, run to Target/WalMart and buy one of their cheapo glucose meters and test right away in the morning when you wake up. If you get anything above 126, head to the doctor. If you get significantly above (I’ll let Qadgop give an exact number, but I’ve heard DKA can start as low as 250), head to the ER.
The deal with LADA is that it doesn’t take years (like the OP was describing) to get to the point of near complete insulin deficiency. A lot of doctors assume the high blood sugar is due to type 2, prescribe metformin, and then within a few months the patient ends up in the ER in ketoacidosis with a blood sugar of over 500 and THEN LADA is diagnosed. You’ve got a good doc to catch it so fast!
In short, LADA can start in a very subtle way, but it definitely doesn’t take years to make itself loudly known.
OK, yeah, that makes sense - it can present slower than typical T1 in kids, but not YEARS slower.
He actually didn’t, neither did the local endocrinologist I visited. They both said I had T2. I was the one who suspected I was really T1, after reading any and all I could about it, including a Physician’s Diabetes Desk Reference. I just wasn’t responding to the T2 drugs, nor did I have the typical T2 lifestyle (I ate fewer carbs & a healthier diet overall than the “T2 diet info” they gave me, and exercised WAY more.)
It took going to Joslin Diabetes Clinic in Boston to find an Endo who confirmed my suspicions. And she did so, within 5 minutes of my first meeting with her. She looked at the blood glucose charts I’d been keeping, along with the blood work they’d done, and said “I don’t think you’re Type 2, I think you’re Type 1”. I almost kissed her at that point, I’d spent several months being miserable, eating no carbs, and trying to figure out why my body didn’t seem to respond to any drugs.
Of course, there’s always Diabetes type 1.5 (LADA, or latent autoimmune diabetes of adulthood) to confuse the picture. Plus a bunch of other of even smaller niche diabetic types, including CFRD (cystic fibrosis related diabetes).