Oscar's Dr. Stephanie Reznick describes some potential complications of diabetes and what you can do to avoid them.
Virtual CareClinically Speaking
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In Part 2 of our video series on diabetes management, Oscar's Dr. Stephanie Reznick describes some potential complications of diabetes and what you can do to avoid them.
"Hi everyone! This is Dr. Stephanie Camaglia Reznick. I'm a board-certified internist and one of the medical directors for virtual care here at Oscar.
In one of my prior videos (opens in new tab), I talked a bit about diabetes, what exactly it is and a little bit of what happens to your body if you have diabetes.
Today, I want to go into a little bit more depth to talk about some complications of diabetes.
Short-Term Complications
First, let's talk about some short-term kind of complications that can occur. If blood sugars are really high, they can actually act as a food source for certain infections like yeast and make you more susceptible to getting those infections. This is on top of the fact that high blood sugars can make it harder for certain cells like your white blood cells in your immune system to do their job so you're even more susceptible to infections.
Other cells are also affected by high blood sugars in the short term such as skin cells. This is why some people with diabetes have a harder time or it takes longer for their body to heal from a wound or from some surgeries.
If your blood sugar gets really high, you can actually develop what we call acute and potentially fatal complications. For example, high blood sugars can make it hard for the cells in your brain and neurons to work and can lead you to go into a coma — you might have heard this colloquially called a diabetic coma.
Another thing that can happen if your blood sugars get really high is something called diabetic ketoacidosis. What happens is because the sugar can't get into your cells for your cells to use as energy, your body starts to use other sources of fuel. Byproducts of this other fuel line release ketones and acids into your bloodstream which can make you feel very sick. Symptoms can include nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain.
If you're feeling sick and you notice your blood sugars are high in particular, please be careful and get emergency care. These can be very dangerous situations.
Long-Term Complications
Now, let's take a step back and look at what happens to the body if your blood sugars remain very elevated or even somewhat elevated for longer periods of time. We call these long-term complications of diabetes.
Let's go back to the car analogy that I brought up in my last video on diabetes.
In this analogy, we talked about how the cells that make up the body are like a car and they need the blood sugar to run like gas and in order for the blood sugar to get into the cell, it has to go through a receptor and insulin access the lock.
So for the car, the blood sugar is like the gasoline and the insulin unlocks the gas tank. Based on this analogy what happens in diabetes over long periods of time is gasoline can't get into the cell but it's building up outside of the cell — just like in a car if you couldn't get gasoline into the gas tank but it was filling up all around the car outside of the gas tank, it would do a lot of damage. Same idea.
For example, the long-term effects of blood sugars being high can cause your arteries — the blood vessels in your body — to become inflamed. This can lead to you developing plaques which actually narrow the arteries. If you think of the arteries as being little hoses that carry blood around your body, well now the hoses are narrowed and blood flow can decrease. This is the exact situation that can lead to strokes and heart attacks.
Likewise, just having elevated blood sugars can just damage cells on their own and this can increase your risk for things like heart failure in and of itself.
Other complications due to diabetes include kidney disease, eye disease and something called diabetic neuropathy. It's a long word for saying that your longer neurons in your nerves actually get damaged and don't really submit signals the way they're supposed to. You can get numbness, you can get burning or tingling or what we call neurologic pain.
What You Can Do
Because patients with diabetes are at risk for developing these complications, there are certain preventative things we recommend that you do in the average year such as:
Getting an eye exam
Getting a urine test to make sure your kidneys are doing okay (your kidneys make urine that's why we check the urine)
A diabetic foot exam (we basically tickle your foot in a few different places to make sure that you can feel it okay).
Your provider will also likely check blood work at least once or twice a year. Most people might even be every three months. This is to just to keep an eye on your blood sugars — remember that A1c I mentioned in the last video (opens in new tab) — as well as your kidney function and electrolytes.
This content does not constitute medical advice and is not meant to be a substitute for professional medical advice, including diagnosis or treatment. Contact your physician with any questions you may have regarding COVID-19 or your personal health. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, dial 911 for immediate assistance.
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