Diabetes is a chronic and incurable disease, one that affects a significant majority of the general public, worldwide. It is a disease which has been around long enough and learned enough upon that there are really great forms of treatment available for it now, however if left untreated or improperly managed, there can be some incredibly serious complications of diabetes.
Complications of Diabetes
The complications of[tag] diabetes[/tag] can differ quite drastically, depending on how long you have left the disease gone untreated and how serious it has become. Heart disease is actually the leading cause of death for people with heart disease, and this is obviously one of the most serious complications that are possible to occur.
Blindness is another possible complication, one that is actually quite common among people with diabetes even if they are treating their disease properly, and this is why adults who have diabetes always need to make sure that they have annual eye exams in order to ensure the health of their eyes and to protect their vision.
The reason that blindness is a possible complication is because over time high blood sugar levels can damage the blood vessels that feed the retina of the eye, and the blood vessels from here will often leak fluid. This may end up causing the retina to swell up and vision to blur, a condition which is known as diabetic macular edema and this is typically the first sign that the person will notice.
Another of the most common complications of diabetes involves kidney failure, and even when drugs and diet are able to control the disease, it is still able to lead to kidney disease and kidney failure. High blood sugar levels, especially over a significant period of time, are able to damage the kidneys, and when the kidneys are damaged they are not able to clean the blood well as they normally do. This allows waste products and fluid to be able to build up in the blood, and can result in incredibly serious side effects.
Yet another of the most major complications of diabetes is erectile dysfunction, this condition includes the total inability to have an erection, the inability to sustain an erection, or the occasional inability to have or sustain an erection. Men who have diabetes are actually three times as likely to have erectile dysfunction than women, and among those men who suffer from erectile dysfunction, those with diabetes are likely to have experienced the problem much earlier than the men who do not have diabetes.