Diabetes left unchecked can have severe consequential effects on your health and can be expensive to treat. It is imperative to manage your blood sugar levels to keep from damaging body functions. Poor blood sugar management can cause harm to your eyes, heart, and kidneys.
Your Eyes
Diabetes can affect your eyes and cause diabetic eye disease. The most important thing you can do to prevent eye problems is to have tight control of your blood sugar as well as maintain a healthy diet. High blood sugar can damage blood vessels. This can cause restricted blood flow through the small blood vessels in your eyes. It also causes the lens to swell. Both conditions lead to blurry vision. Damage to the blood vessels in your retina can cause blindness. People with diabetes are more likely to have cataracts and get glaucoma than those who do not have diabetes.
Your Heart
High blood sugar levels can damage the blood vessels and nerves that support your heart. It tends to keep the blood vessels constricted, reducing blood flow to the heart and allowing plaque to build up. This condition leads to heart disease. The damage to your nerves by high blood sugar will increase your resting heart rate. It also may make you feel dizzy when standing, cause you to feel out of breath when exercising, and can lead to a heart attack without any warning.
Your Kidneys
The damage to blood vessels in your kidneys by having high blood sugar causes them not to work very well. The damage causes the arteries feeding the kidneys to narrow. Restricted blood flow to your kidneys can lead to kidney disease. Over a period of time, the tiny filtering units in your kidneys become damaged. This leads to poor functioning of your kidneys. Not being able to properly remove waste out of the kidneys can lead to kidney failure.
If you have a problem with high blood sugar, it is to your advantage to keep track of your daily sugar levels. It would be helpful to have regular eye examinations and tests that check your heart and kidney functions. You may even find it helpful to change your diet. Blindness, heart disease, and having dialysis because of kidney failure will greatly diminish your quality of life. Managing your sugar level will help you maintain a good quality of life.
